Day 35: A Special Day — Matt Goes Exploring

I talked to the young woman working the desk at my hostel about my failed attempt to visit the Ghibli Museum and she tole me that you always need a reserved ticket to get in. She said the museum was booked until November. I wish I had done a little more research.

I woke up early for my last day in Tokyo. Of course, it was raining. I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to see Mt. Fuji. I had no idea coming here that it would be so rainy and cloudy the whole time. Good to know next time I visit. I did a vague search for museums in the area. I have always had an interest in Japanese history (they had samurais, so it was pretty awesome), so I thought a museum would be a good way to start the day.

This is when I discovered there was a Ghibli Museum.

Let me explain; Studio Ghibli is probably the most famous animation studio besides Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks. They frequently worked with the talented director Hayao Miyazaki to create films such as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and The Wind Rises. If you haven't heard of them, I highly recommend any of those three movies.

So I was excited. It would take an hour to reach the museum by subway, but that's what I got up early for, so I would have extra time. I had some pizza as an early lunch and got on the subway.

The Tokyo Metro is a fantastic public transportation system. Just in my experience using it today, I already know that it beats the heck out of the Boston MBTA. Maybe I'm a little jaded when it comes to that subway system. The MBTA is pretty good as public transit goes, but the Tokyo system is still better.

For starters, the trains go absolutely everywhere. It seems overwhelming, but it's really quite convenient. I never have to walk further than ten minutes to get to a station. There are also separate platforms at some stations, one side will be regular trains while the other is express. Each stop is labeled with a number, making it easy to count out how many stops are left. The ticket machines are a breeze to use, language isn't even a barrier sometimes, later in the day when I had used the machine a few times, I didn't even need to hit the "English" button. And finally, the trains are extremely clean. I didn't feel like I'd catch something by sitting in the seats. Well done Tokyo.

I finally made it to the Ghibli Museum, somewhere west of Tokyo. I walked along Inokashira Park, noticing that there was a pond and a zoo in the park. If there was time after the museum, maybe I would check out the zoo.

When I reached the museum, there was a line. I got in line. People seemed to all have some kind of envelope they were handing the employee as they entered. I didn't know what this was, but thought maybe these people had bought tickets online. I made it to the front and the employee did his best to explain what was going on. "This is a special day, you have to have a ticket already."

I was sorely disappointed. I was very excited to see this museum, and I had come so far. I stood outside for a moment, contemplating what to do, as a light drizzle fell. I took a few pictures of what I could see from the outside, which wasn't much, but it was something. I decided to check out the zoo.

I walked back through the park and came to the zoo entrance. I learned that the zoo had two different parks, one focused on aquatic life, while the other focused on non-aquatic life. One ticker would get me into both. I had found the aquatic one first, so I entered.

The first exhibit I saw surprised me. It also taught me something. When you are on the opposite side of the world, zoos are different. Animals that you see every day back home might be something exotic to people somewhere else. The first exhibit in the zoo, was Canadian Geese. They had four of them, in a small enclosure with a river of water running through the middle. I couldn't help but laugh. Back home these geese are such a pest, but here in Japan, they are worth of their own zoo exhibit. Sometimes it's the little things that remind you how different things can be.

There were a few other exhibits like this, with animals so normal back home, but so rare here. There was a Mallard Duck exhibit, and a Raccoon exhibit. Imagine if a zoo in the US had exhibits for these animals. There would be riots in the streets.

Despite these few exhibits, the zoo was actually really great. It was small, but the animals were very active. I'll talk about some of my favorite exhibits. First was the Japanese Giant Salamander. This behemoth is bigger than my head. It only moved a little bit, but I am a salamander fan, so seeing this giant creature was pretty cool. Next was the Japanese Marten. Another of my favorite animals is the Marten, it's like a mix between a ferret and a fox. I remember coming up to the cage and the marten would poke it's head out form behind the grass. I would lock eyes with it, then it would duck down, and reappear on the other side of the grass, and repeat, for a few minutes. It really felt like I was playing some kind of game with it.

There's plenty more awesome animals I could talk about, but I'll save you some time and only talk about one more thing. You know how most zoos have an exhibit where you can walk through the cage full of birds? This zoo had that, except instead of birds, there were squirrels. I remember walking into the cage and seeing two squirrels crawling up a guy's legs. The exhibit was essentially a small forest with a path running through the middle. Squirrels were constantly running across the path in front of you, climbing on your shoe or your pants leg, and chasing each other through the trees. I have never seen anything like this. Fortunately these Japanese squirrels were smaller than the one's I'm used to back home. If they did this with squirrels at home, people would lose fingers.

I remember walking into the exhibit, there was two sets of doors, you could only open one when the other was closed. It felt like I was entering some kind of Jurassic Park exhibit. Then of course I thought of a movie about squirrels turning on humans. There's your next movie SyFy channel.

After a while the mosquitos (brought to life by the constant rain) drove me out of the park and back into the city. I decided to get off the subway at Shinjuku. I recognized the name of the area, but I didn't know why, but I had time to kill. I walked around the are, there wasn't much to do, but it was still a nice walk since the weather had cooled off and the rain had stopped falling. One interesting thing I did find was the famous Love sculpture that is today's thumbnail image.

After wandering for a short time, I got back on the subway and headed towards the hostel. Once in the area I found dinner, and hung out for a while. I drank a few ginger ales and enjoyed the atmosphere. Tokyo is a nice place, and even though the weather wasn't great, and I missed out on a few things, I still had a good time here. I'll just have to see Mt. Fuji next time, and reserve some Ghibli tickets way in advance. Maybe if I'm lucky tomorrow morning will be nice enough for a view of Mt. Fuji, but I won't get my hopes up.

I hop on a plane to Sydney tomorrow, but I won't actually arrive in Sydney until the next day. This is partly due to a long layover. But I'm still excited. It's been a long time since I've been in a country that speaks english.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my time in Tokyo. But even if you didn't thanks for reading and here's to tomorrow.