Ghibli Adventures

I was going to update last night, But I didn't get home until nearly midnight, I think, and then I just was too tired to even attempt writing in my blog. Directly after school, Emily and I had gone to Roppongi to see the movie Kurosagi in which Yamashita Tomohisa stars as a swindler of swindlers. (He swindles the swindlers.) I understood...about a third of the movie, and felt like it was way too long. But Yamapi is weird enough to keep me amused, so I don't regret seeing the movie. I just didn't get it. My favorite part was probably the elevator scene, when Yamapi almost got taken out by the elevator. His, "wohhhh~!" as the elevator whooshed by was just...fabulous. *cracks up* The whole movie I was waiting for at least one person to pull a gun out, but nope, not a single one. During the part when he was acting as the business man fluent in English, Emily was like, "I didn't understand anything he just said, did you?" XD His English was understandable in that it was perfectly grammatical...but his pronunciation wasn't so hot.

Oh, but it was pouring yesterday, and I still don't have boots, so my pants were soaked through and my socks were halfway soaked. Even though it was raining still after the movie, we went to Shibuya afterward to go to Tower Records, since although everything else shuts down around nine-ish, Tower Records and the other music stores were still open. Within seconds of walking in, I saw a magazine (What's In) with L'Arc-en-Ciel on the cover, so I couldn't resist picking it up and flipping through. I ended up buying it, of course. I was wandering through the other magazines, and there was a Kera issue with tons of pages of awesome fashion pictures, so I got that, and then I found the movie magazine that I'd been looking for. It talks about movies currently playing, coming soon, and things like that. I figured it would be a good thing to show at my presentation in May, since I'll be talking a lot about the media/entertainment culture.

I ran into Emily since we'd separated when I found the magazines, and then we went upstairs together. I wandered off again to scan through the cds, listening to a few of the listening booth albums, and was sorely tempted to get the 15th Anniversary cd/dvd of L'Arc-en-Ciel's...but resisted. And then I was tempted to get Acid Black Cherry's album 'Black List' but also resist, figuring that I would find out what the songs sound like before I go back and decide to buy it.

I've also come to the conclusion that I need to get myself a DS with the kanji Japanese dictionary, since I keep wanting to look things up, but it's not like I lug books around with me all the time. I'm not a gamer person at all, so the only thing I'd use it for is the dictionary...and getting a normal electronic dictionary is way too expensive, so this should be fine. I really like the fact that I can look kanji up by writing it down on the screen, too. I originally was planning on going to Akihabara tomorrow to look for one, but my plans changed; instead, I'm going to Harajuku and watching the St. Patrick's Day parade! ^___^ Yaaay St. Patrick's day! Even though it's Monday, lol.

Today, a bunch of us went to the Ghibli Museum, and it was awesome. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed pictures inside the museum, so you'll just have to take my word for it. There were sooo many things to look at and watch, and we got to see a ten minute film about a water spider and one of those skier bugs, which was really cute. There was a little boy sitting next to me on his mom's lap, and throughout the whole movie, he was like, "Kore nani? Are nani?" and his mom whispered to him what everything was. I honestly didn't mind (usually I do), because it was interesting trying to understand their conversation...since I understood everything he said, but only some of what his mom said. Besides, there wasn't any dialogue in the film, so it wasn't like I was missing what people were saying.

The museum was set up in themed rooms/floors, and the first one I went into was the room all about how they make animation, and it was sooo cool. There was this one thing that had small figurines on spires out from a tree-shaped column, and the whole thing spun super fast in the dark, with a strobe light set to blink at a certain pace, and so it looked like the figurines were moving. It was really amazing to watch. Every few minutes the lights would turn on and the tree would stop spinning so you could see that the figurines were not moving.

There was also a Goldilocks room where there were huge chairs and a table with giant bowls with spoons and dried rice/beans inside. Walter sat down in one of the chairs and pretended to eat from the bowl, and he looked SO funny and tiny sitting there. Again, too bad about the no pictures inside rule.

My favorite part of the museum would have to be the rooms designed to look like artist's/writer's rooms from Miyazaki's many works. There were drawings and paintings tacked to the walls, and weird inventions and botanical collections everywhere...it was basically my heaven of a study, lol. The paintings were especially amazing. I'm trying to think of better words to describe them, but I'm really doing a terrible job in the English department right now, so I apologize. But they were crazily realistic...yet not, because they were overly beautiful, turning ugly alley scenes into gorgeous dark scenes with water reflections and fantastic perspective.

I bought a stuffed Totoro and a jar of small candy that I'm saving for when I go home. (It should be fine if it's hard candy in a glass jar, right?)

On our walk from Kichi joji station to the museum, we walked through a park...that I can't remember the name of anymore, but it's the one we're going to for the hanami trip for cultural exchange on April 5. It was really nice to walk around in it. I kind of felt like I had gone home for a little bit while walking through. The sakura were starting to bloom but a lot of the trees didn't have any blossoms yet. Today was a perfect day to go to the museum, since it was in the 60s, and I only had a t-shirt; I didn't bother bringing my jacket, and I didn't need it at all even when I was coming back in the evening.

There was a woman walking her pet ferret...I sneakily got a picture around Walter's arm, haha. I think there's a section of his shirt in the picture. When I took the picture, I was sure I had just taken a picture of his stomach instead of the ferret, since I wasn't looking at my camera when I took the picture...so I'm really happy I got it, haha. Oh, I just remembered; when we were going to Jiyugaoka station earlier, we passed two Welsh Corgis tied up by a hair salon, and they were SOOOO cute! ^__^ I want one! They always look so darn smiley, I love it.

Aaaaah I love this sculpture! This is on the roof of the Ghibli Museum. It's a robot from Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I wish I could have taken a picture of the neko bus (Google it in image search; it's the first thing) playground inside, but I wasn't allowed to, obviously. When we saw it, we all said at the same time, "Aw, I wish I was a little kid right now!"

A close up. I love this thing. Reminds me of the one in the movie, and so I can't help looking at it without an aura of kindness radiating from the sculpture.

Lol, there was grass growing out of its hip.

A cool cube thing. There was writing on the top, too, but it was hard to get a good shot of it without people's shadows.

Here we're inside Shibuya station, watching the famous intersection. I was taking pictures, and then waited for the lights to change so people would cross, haha.

On an impulse I recorded us crossing Shibuya intersection...and we almost got hit by a bunch of oncoming traffic, because the light turned red when we were halfway over. Haha, we were running, and it was crazy. I'll try to get a better angle next time, so you can see people's faces instead of just elbows and such. The laughing throughout the whole video is Emily and I cracking up, and the person with dreds is Evan, who we were trying to follow. He actually had to stop in the middle of the crosswalk when two motorcycles drove right in front of him.

I really hate the currency exchange rate right now. It's killing me. I can't go, "Oh, it's about $100," when I'm taking 10000 yen out of the ATM, because it's more than $100 now. Uggghh I hate the stupid weak dollar.