So in the last post, I remembered that I haven’t blogged about the Ghibli exhibition. Which is odd because it was AMAZING and I love Ghibli so normally I share news about it immediately. But better late than never and the exhibition is still going on if you want to visit.

The Studio Ghibli Exhibition is in Nagasaki city, which is quite a ways from Sasebo. But luckily, I went with a friend and she drove so there were no transport problems at all.

The museum is held in the Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture (長崎歴史文化博物館) which actually looks really cool:

And this is what I saw when I went in!!

The city might look familiar to you and it’s because it’s that place from Laputa! Complete with ship! (I know, overuse of exclamation marks but it’s GHIBLI!!!)

The ship will float down and up which is really very cool.

The ticket was 1400 yen per person and even though we went during Golden Week, there weren’t that many people. Which was really lucky for us because I was not looking forward to having to jostle with people. (Ok, there was still a good sized crowd but it was better than expected. We only queued for 5 min)

Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed in the exhibition so I’m gonna grab two from the website. Links in the captions.

The exhibition covers the movies from Nausicaa to Marnie and this is what you see when you enter:

From the museum site

When you enter, you’re greeted by Totoro at a “bar”. It’s really adorable and I loved the attention to detail, like the sootballs hiding at the “staircase” to the side of the bar.

One thing that left an impression on me was how much they talked about the role of the producer. To be honest, I thought the producer was the guy that financed the film but in fact, he does a lot of work (at Studio Ghibli at least). Also, he has way more artistic talent than me so now we know that everyone at Ghibli can draw. They used Princess Mononoke as a case study and that part of the exhibition ended with a replica of Producer Suzuki’s office.

(I also really liked the board with all the handdrawn posters for company events!)

Taken from Museum Site

And there was also this amazing room filled with Ghibli goods! I totally want to work with them because their overseas partners get the cutest postcards for new year’s and stuff. Plus, there are special watches made for each movie and how cool would it be to get one of those?

They also had a section on the science/research behind the movies – about airplanes and insects and such.

This is the one place in the museum I can take photos. Totoro flying through the air and…

If I remember correctly, the cat bus at the actual museum in Mitaka is only for kids but anyone can go into this one which is why I was so excited. It doesn’t look that cool from the inside though, because this is what you see:

It’s basically a room with seats, although I liked the fact that you can see Totoro through one of the “windows”. Made it feel a little like the movie.

Oh, and I don’t know if you noticed but it says “Nagasaki” on the destination for the cat bus!

They had a gift shop but they didn’t take JCB which was a blessing in disguise because I really need to stop spending so money and save up. I did get the exhibition pamphlet, which was 600 yen and really worth it because apart from information about the movies, they also had information from the exhibition, like how the commercials for the movie were worked out and the role that commercials played.

If you’ve got the time and you’re in Kyushu, you should really go for this exhibition. There’s a lot of great stuff here and it’s probably easier to enter than the museum in Mitaka. They will be changing it to a Ghibli layout exhibition when this one ends, but I think I’ve been to something similar so I’m not sure if I’ll go for that…