Tokyo Day 3

LAST DAY BEST DAY. I was super excited for the Ghibli museum, the walk there was nice too, first we got the tube and then walked through a more rural area of Tokyo, still dense but more parks and smaller houses. very cool to see areas we take for granted in the UK but with a slight difference due to culture.

Ghibli museum was super cool. Compare the films of Disney to the films of Ghibli, the over the top of Disney films are represented by the intensity and size of Disney theme parks. Ghibli is much more modest, we were in the Ghibli museum half a day and it was far more than enough to really see everything there for me. Seeing the short was interesting and cute, but the subject matter were clearly for younger kids as the audience was the animation lot and bunch of families. Regardless it was cool to see some animation from Ghibli that will never be released. It was also amazing to see the mock up of Miyazaki's office and sketches and painting all over the walls. effectively it showed the process of hand drawn animation but with specific ghibli films. A process i am familiar with but amazing to see for such great films that i enjoy so much. It was surprising to see that a large majority of the patrons were families with little kids and tourists from abroad. Its quite clear that it isnt quite the case that everyone over there watches Ghibli like i thought they did. Though i still feel that some reactions from my coursemates where quite strange, crying in the cat bus model and wanting to stay there all day were some of the things i heard people do that i just found a little strange. Regardless i wouldn't have to worry about being around the whole course again before leaving.

For the evening we first went to Meji Temple, it was cool to see some more traditional japanese architecture and cool to see more spiritual elements to japanese culture. I made sure to sketch a lot in the temple and took plenty of reference images of the wedding that passed through.

As the temple closed we moved on to Harajuku, which while still tokyo is so much more dfferent to Shinjuku. On the way out we met a man and me and Katy had a nice friendly conversation while he practiced his English and i practiced my Japanese (He was much better than i was but he also had 50 years more experience than me so i didnt feel too bad). Everyone was so god damn tired, Wing knew the area so suggest we check out a small street known as Takeshita but didn't remember how to get there, so i was quite proud of myself when i organised us all to get there (including two first years we just met) and then also organised us to meet up again at a certain time so we had the freedom to go off and do our own thing without getting lost. I'm not a bad team leader really when i want to be, although sometimes i can be a bit anal with details.

Finally Dan, Sylvia and Max took me, Hayley, Ciara and Wing to a restaurant they found on the first day and my goodness, it was the best meal ever. Not relevant, just very much liked the restaurant. So much so that we attempted to find it once we got home on google maps by digitally walking the way we did. (We managed to find it)