Imperial Palace and Ghibli Museum

After a good rest and Marion having recovered enough from her sore throat/AC cold, we were of again, this time to see the Imperial Palace of Tokyo and the Ghibli Museum.

The Imperial Palace East Garden is the only part of the Imperial Palace open to the public and offers pleasant walks, a nice garden and massive walls build solely from fitted stone blocks.

Otemon-gate

Imperial Palace East Garden entrance

Imperial Palace East Garden

Rest house

Imperial Palace East Garden

Imperial Palace East Garden wall

Imperial Palace East Garden

Moat

Imperial Palace East Garden

Taking a rest

Dolphin, according to description

Painting the waterfall

Not much more to say about that, except that it was really hot.

After grabbing lunch and visiting Akiba we headed to Mitaka for the famous Ghibli Museum.
In order to visit there one has to make a reservation in advance, which is possible outside from Japan by using travel agencies, inside Japan, however, you are limited to buy tickets at LAWSON convenience stores. Those have terminals installed (called Loppy) that let you buy cinema tickets and make various other reservations, including entering the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. Actually getting them was not quite easy, as I did now how to get them (the LAWSON site has an English explanation), I was however unable to read the error messages displayed. After getting some staff member to read the kanji for me I finally got the tickets, 1000yen each. Had to improvise the time and date, as the originally planned ones where already sold out, but whatever.
After arriving there you get handed a ticket for the in-house cinema showing exclusive short films, the ticket itself being three frames of a film reel of a Ghibli movie. Picture taking is prohibited inside but allowed outside and on top of the rooftop garden.

Ghibli entrance

Group picture!

Laputa

The building is filled with exhibits showing the evolution and creation process of the movies, original sketches and drafts, lots of statues and interior deco that created the illusion of actually being inside the world of Ghibli.
Also a cat-bus for kids to play in/with and of course a souvenir shop.
We had reserved for the 16:00 admittance so it was late afternoon/early evening when we came back.

Visited Hachiko again, for Marion to see him properly.

Hachiko once more

We are going to do some shopping tomorrow and will spend the Saturday in a ryokan in Sarugakyo-Onsen, Gunma, where a fireworks festival is scheduled.

So long and stay tuned,
JuergenS

written by

JuergenS on August 26, 2010 from Tokyo, Japan

from the travel blog: Two month of Japan

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