Day 353: Ghibli Museum, Santa and Shopping on Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve!
By 9:15 am we’d wolfed down some running-late breakfast, and were training out to the Kichijoji Station, where we were met by a guide to take us on a 40 minute walk through Inokashira Park toward the Ghibli Museum.
Inokashira Park was an outer borough-type peaceful city park with jogging tracks, kids at recess, bird watching posts and plenty of benches.
There was also a shrine. The guide mentioned that people like to “wash” their money here in the holy water for good fortune, and the kids begged to do it to their arcade coins. Why not. There was one lady I saw who even put her Visa under the spout.
We weren’t sure what to expect from the Ghibli. All we knew was that it was really special and very difficult to get tickets (ours were bought through a second party via our travel agent).
Turns out it was really cool. No photos were allowed inside the building, but it was a whimsical, enchanting little building dedicated to all things Studio Ghibli, which is responsible for some of the most famous animation in Japan.
We watched a Ghibli original movie in the small theater and then loved seeing all the storyboards, paintings, sketches and models of various characters around the museum. Such care and creativity, you had to admire it all. Not much was in English but that was ok.
It reminded me a little of Junibacken, the ode to Pippi Longstocking/Astrid Lindgren that we saw back in Stockholm — a nostalgic deep-dive for a country-specific cultural institution popular with kids and their parents. Not emotionally meaningful for us but fun to see how important it was to so many of our fellow visitors.
We decided to walk the 20 minutes back to the train station, taking a different route through real life in this section of Tokyo, called Mitaka.
The kids were very good walkers. We got onigiri — those rice ball wrap/sandwiches — again at 7-11. I have had one every day here. Googled it and see there are plenty of places that sell them in NYC. Phew. Glad we’re going back to NYC, by the way, where we can easily find all the favorite foods we’ve discovered around the world.
Our next destination was to see Santa for a photo!! We’ve had a Santa portrait taken every year since Willa was born. Couldn’t break the tradition now. Our travel agents at Small World travel had their folks in Japan find us a Santa photo setup. What they came up with was perfect — and perfectly random. The Hotel Chinzanso is a big conference/wedding type hotel with very Western decor and an elaborate Christmas setup.
Willa wore the 70s dress I got at that cool vintage store in Nelson and James the 90s red plaid flannel shirt we got him in Kyoto. We were early, and had to wait in a spare banquet room for our 3 pm reservation.
Soon enough the kids were gripping and grinning with a young white Santa (I was hoping for Japanese, frankly, but you know that wasn’t going to happen).
So fun to see the kids smile and ham it up for the camera after many years of tears and/or awkwardness and nerves for Santa.
Teddy and I passed our phone to the attendant who grabbed a snapshot of us with the Big Guy. Compared to the kids we were shlubby in our same-every-single-day clothes, but it’ll be fun for the record.
Anyway: Mission accomplished!
We made a pit stop at the Rapongi Hills neighborhood in search of a toy store where Willa and James could shop for small gifts for one another (budget: 1000 yen, or about $9).
Success!
Finally we cabbed back to our hotel for an early evening of….lounging!
We got the kids bathed and in PJs so we could watch “Elf.” Interestingly, neither Teddy nor I had ever seen it. Turned out to be the perfect movie for these guys — they were belly laughing through the whole thing. Plus, fun for them (and us) to see a New York Christmas movie.
Have we mentioned that our hotel room is cozy? Perfect for Christmas.
We read “The Fart Before Christmas,” a mind-numbingly stupid picture book I bought in Australia for some reason, and they of course loved it. They fell asleep by 9 and we laid out their “Santa” gifts.
Night!
MISC:
Japan is the oldest country in terms of population age — and it’s got a birth rate so low it’s a threat to the future existence of this entire country. A huge percentage of the population is over 90 — and it shows. 30,000 people turned 100 last year in this country! Not only are there old people everywhere, there are also public facilities designed to respectfully aid the elderly everywhere. Examples: Strongly worded signs about priority seating on subways, yellow stripes along sidewalks to help the elderly navigate busy streets, lower elevator buttons and priority elevators for wheelchair-bound, crosswalk buttons that add extra time if needed for people to cross the street, etc.
James to Teddy: “What would you do if you were really rich? I know. You would take more Ubers, take more planes, and do your credit card a lot.”
We are spending a lot of time contemplating our return. Are we sad? Excited? Lame answer, but obviously it’s both. I think most of all we’re looking forward to applying all the lessons we’ve learned this year to our real, everyday existence. More on those coming in our recap blog posts.
If someone came to us and said, “I’ve got a magic wand that could send you back to day one to start the year again for a second time,” we’d decline. It’s been a raging success, but we agree that once through was enough. There’s not even a moment or week or day we’d go back to re-live. We are facing forward, squarely.
