Day 10: Ghibli Park - Kyoto
Today our destination was Kyoto, the old capital of Japan. But first - we had tickets to Ghibli park close to Nagoya.
Ghibli park
For those of you who don’t know what Ghibli is, a) shame on you and b) please read up on the legendary Studio Ghibli.
We did not quite know what to expect from this visit, and to be honest, I found the experience a bit underwhelming - or whelming as some prefer to say.
First of all, if you drive in the direction of Ghibli park, you will not see that name anywhere on the signage or official information panels. It’s called Expo 2005 Aichi Commemorative Park - the park that was built for World Expo 2005. Ghibli-related attractions are spread out in the park, and have their specific names, such as Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse, Valley of Witches, Hill of Youth, Mononoke Village, and Dondoko Forest.
Second of all, that is exactly what it still is: the Expo 2005 Aichi Commemorative Park. It is frozen in time and has not been developed since, it seems. It’s unclear where to go, things are far from each other, food is sketchy and visitor management is awful - there are queues everywhere, especially to take a picture with a Miyazaki movie character or to pay for a purchase in a shop. We only had tickets for the Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse which contained a couple of rooms and characters from films, a cinema, an exhibition and a shop. And a children area which seemed to be the most fun of all!
One highlight from our visit was the movie Water Spider Monmon in the beautiful cinema “Orion”. This is a wonderful short animation film about a water spider who befriends a water strider. It’s a film to immediately fall in love with. If you have never seen anything by Miyazaki, please invest 15 minutes and you will understand his eternal appeal to many. Another highlight was the exhibition of drawn animation cells for various films and gorgeous background paintings.
In summary, I cannot really recommend visiting Ghibli park unless you are like 90% of visitors and are prepared to queue for 45 minutes to get a selfie with the No-Face character from the film Spirited Away.
Kyoto
A linguistic sidenote: Kyoto (京都, Kyōto) means “Capital Metropolis” and Tokyo (東京, Tōkyō) means “Eastern Capital. You can see the kanji 京 (kyō) in both city names.
We had an uneventful trip to Kyoto along the Express Ways, with a short snack / bio / coffee break in between. It was dark when we arrived to our 120 years old small 2-story house in a charming narrow street. There is a warm, authentic atmosphere in this part of the city which can be felt even in the dark.
The landlady spoke perfect English which was very comforting since we got a huge amount of info in 15 minutes, including house manual and restaurant recommendations. We brought away the car - a spotless experience - and took an Uber back to the house. We then left to a recommended izakaya to have some warm food.
Saying that we were impressed is saying nothing. It was exquisite. First, we were surprised by a set of appetizers consisting of tofu pudding with walnuts inside, Japanese sweet potatoes with lemon dressing and caramelized zucchini. We ordered potatoe croquettes, Japanese blue coke, peach juice and grilled chicken thigh. Every single piece was perfection. We also decided to order 2 deserts for sharing: sweet potatoes in honey and roasted pistacchio ice cream. And as if the gastronomic dimension were not enough, we also got compliments for our Japanese language - the owner lady asked whether we lived in Japan! Although our Japanese improved a bit, our main claim to fame is undoubtedly our virtuoso google translating technique under the table.
Finally, we did some grocery shopping in a convenience store underway, arranged our stuff to make it a bit cosy, and sat down for blogging with a cup of tea.
Standby to read more about Kyoto in the coming days!
