April 5th, 2017!
THE day was here! Ghibli Museum Day and I could not be more excited. Aside from planning the Disneyland portion of our trip the Ghibli museum was the only other part I felt I had to really plan out far in advance and even that laughingly close to the entrance day in Disney terms. Tickets go on sale from the first of each month for the following four months (so I bought our April 5th tickets on December 31st, 2016 as that was already January 1st 2017 in Japan). I was NOT leaving it to chance that I would get tickets.
The only way to purchase them ahead of time is to go through a designated agency for your country, so in my case I bought them from JTB USA. I had to fill out an online form listing my preferred dates and putting the exact names of those who would be visiting. They then sent a confirmation asking me to call in with my CC number and then mailed me the ticket vouchers. They charge $15 a ticket instead of the $10 at the gate plus another $14 for shipping, but at least I knew I had a spot. The only other way would have been to wait until we arrived in Japan and try to buy them at Lawsons which then also gives you an entry time for the museum whereas the vouchers don't have that - you can go in anytime they are open. So it was money well spent I suppose!
Once again we walked down to Shinjuku station and this time had a quick breakfast at a little bakery called Gontran Cherrier Tokyo that had good reviews. They had a ton of interesting options and it was already getting crowded just after opening but we had an easy time getting a table upstairs. I think the vibe they were going for was European metro - there was a ton of white tile and European posters upstairs and they were playing a mix of French and English music. The pastries were really tasty but we kind of overdid it... I kept the curry bun for later (the one with sesame seeds) but we did indeed share the rest between us.
We once again hopped on the Chuo line (which is why we almost did it yesterday) and then transferred to the Ghibli bus. I had been told we would know it when we saw it and man, they were right!
The ride to the museum was uneventful but I really liked looking out the window here. The route we took was on a one way road that had awesome parkway on one side and cute houses & businesses on the other. It looked very well planned out and orderly with lots of trees. We got to the museum early as I had planned since they say online people line up early but we were one of the very first and there was no line yet. I had not known that the museum was inside a park area with a zoo, baseball fields, a pond as well as shrines... we could have probably spent all day wandering around here! Instead we milled about taking pictures of more sakura - they were pretty much fully in bloom by now. <3
Closer to opening we went back and joined the now formed line as they went inside the gates. Two workers were checking tickets as we went in as well as passports in our case, verifying we were the same name on our tickets. We then lined up by the front door to await opening when they rang a bell to greet us inside. You cannot take any pictures from inside the museum, but here is the main gates before they were opened.
I have heard mixed messages about the museum, with people either loving it or hating it. It seems like if you go in hoping for more of a museum with insider info on the company itself or looking for anecdotes and dirt you'll have a bad time. If you just love the movies and enjoy looking at cute displays with a few facts about the drawings of the film and such then you will love it. I think I would be happy with either but the cute details everywhere were just so... relaxing. I loved it. I also spent way too much in the gift shop, lol!
With your admission you get a ticket to see a special short movie you can only see there. They were showing 'Water Spider Monmon" on our day... I hate spiders, lol. The movie was very cute and I didn't mind too much but it was still funny.
We of course planned to have lunch in the cafe and it had been recommended that we line up about 30 minutes before opening which means we only had an hour or so before we needed to go get in line. They have a seating area outside where you line up and they gave us menus to peruse while we waited. They then brought us in one group at a time about 15 minutes early and took our orders. One thing that was appreciated was that they only brought maybe 5 tables in at first. Once they had taken all our orders (in the order in which we came/were sat) and gotten our drinks they would bring more groups in one at a time. We had a mostly empty cafe for our entire meal this way, and Im sure it helped the kitchen pace themselves to boot.
The prices were a little higher than we were used to by now, but we didn't mind much since the atmosphere was so nice. I had "strawhat" omurice where they put the layer of egg over a pile of fried rice and drew a "ribbon" around the crown of it with ketchup. It was very tasty but my husband did not enjoy the tonkatsu sandwich at all... it was pretty dry and by now he was not feeling well. I'm not sure if we had too much breakfast or what but he was uncomfortable for the rest of the afternoon. Once we were done with our lunch we started working our way through the different exhibits, sitting on the catbus, taking in all the pictures and wandering the outside gardens. I spent a lot of time examining every last item in the gift shop and by some miracle of sheer willpower my husband did not strangle me for being so slow, lol!
I had warned him prior to the trip I would likely want to bring back a bunch of swag from here and Disneyland, and we even brought the extra large luggage for each of us to accommodate our swag which is unheard of for us. We typically buy very little on our travels... as long as I get something small, usually a magnet, from a given country or city I'm usually good. BUT NOT HERE AND NOT TODAY. >
I did carry it the entire rest of the day though - it was the least I could do. The only thing he got was a tin of cookies to share with his coworkers.
Once we were done at the museum we headed back into Tokyo and went over to Shinjuku Gyoen. It was shocking we had been there so long and not yet set foot in the park since it was RIGHT THERE but it is only open 9-4 with gates closing at 4:30. This really was our first chance... and we arrived around 3pm! Entry was 200 yen per person and there is no alcohol in the park so there were no raucous cherry blossom shenanigans here - just quiet picnics with friends and family. We pulled out our sheet and drank some tea under the blossoms and relaxed for a bit here then wandered as far into the park as we could before they started to announce closing.
Closing was... odd. They started announcing close at 4pm and most people ignored it. Around 4:15 they started playing old lang syne so we started walking faster, lol. We hit the restroom before leaving and noticed more and more security officers about - two were outside the restrooms. They were announcing the close very loudly and suggesting all the "okyakusama" (guests) start hitting the road (my interpretation) but they did not stop us from entering the bathroom. 4:30 though? HOO BOY. An entire wave of security officers rushed further into the park from the entrance where we were at this point and they started blaring a siren over the loudspeaker. No more nice music, literally siren sounds.
; They take closing VERY seriously it would seem. Eventually.
As we wandered out with the hoards of people towards the train station some other tourists swimming upstream towards the park called over asking if the park was still open and we yelled back no, it closed at 4:30. They were about as bummed as we were that first day... ^^;
I then followed my coworker's other suggestion and we took a train down to Chiba to try out the 'best pork donburi' place. This one was also up on the third floor of an inconspicuous building and was called 'Butayarou' which I find very punny.
My husband liked this more than the tonkatsu but I think I like the tonkatsu better if just buy virtue of including tea and pickles. Oh who am I kidding I also love runny eggs. It was really good lean meat though! The owner suggested I get the small and my husband got medium which was way too much rice for him. Looking on yelp the only english review from 2014 mentions baby roaches apparently... I did not see a single bug or issue when I was there? Maybe its just to scare us away, lol.
From here we hit up another recommendation - Super Potato. Its a huge second hand video game store. We wandered around a little and it was interesting but we had no real plans to buy a system to play the games, so we just kind of took in the sights.
I was dissatisfied with Shinjuku Gyoen because I wanted to see the sakura parties so I did a naughty thing and dragged my tired and footsore husband over to Ueno park at this point. We wandered through the park, I enjoying the crush of happy people and marveling at the uplit trees, lantern lights and shrines, my husband wondering why we were gawking at strangers partying with coworkers. ^^; We did not stay long.
I filmed our walk out of the park to always remember just how jam packed it was and then relented and we went back to the apartment. Tomorrow we were transferring to Osaka on the shinkansen so we needed to pack up and be ready to go in the morning.
