Day 9 in Japan

This is Cheryl, Mommy, Fred, me, Jessica, Fu-chan, Patty, John and Noriko.



One of the Ghibli Museum's buses.


THURSDAY, MAY 29

About a week before leaving for Japan, I e-mailed my friend Tom Ford to let him know my plans.

He said he wanted me to go to the Ghibli Museum. And he sent me a link to the museum.

It's a museum dedicated to the work of anime master Hayao Miyazaki, who won an Oscar a few years back for "Spirited Away."

My mother has never been one for animation. I saw it in the Screening Room and loved it. Tom gave me a DVD of "Spirited Away" for Christmas that year.

One night, I popped it in the DVD and my mother came and sat and watched it with me. She got hooked.

Last year, one of the cable channels had a Miyazaki festival, hosted by John Lassiter of the Disney-Pixel Studio. Lassiter is a big fan.

So we've purchased many of the Miyazaki films.

When I showed her the link to the museum, she said she knew Mitaka because we used to live there. It turned out it was on the other side of town, and everything has changed so much. She said nothing looked familiar.

My cousin Noriko also loves the Miyazaki fllms and was familiar with the museum because of her friends works there. She arranged to get us tickets, which are difficult to buy because you have to get them weeks in advance.

That morning, we got up early and Mariko-san once again drove us to the Minami Kashiwa train station. In two trips. In the rain.

Noriko, who lives two hours away, met us at the station. I swear my relatives were so good to us. They went out of their way to make sure we were on the right train, going the right way.

It took about an hour to get to Mitaka, where Noriko's daughter, Fuyuka met us. Fu-chan, as we call her, is now 37, and gorgeous. She got an art history degree from a college in West Virginia. I can never remember the name of the school. When I saw her 10 years ago, her English was almost perfect. It's not as good as it was 10 years ago, but I guess when you don't use a language every day, it's easy to lose the ability.

Even so, she still speaks English better than I speak Japanese!

We got on the Ghibli Museum bus. Yes, the museum has its own fleet of buses.

Tom asked me to have my picture taken with the Cat Bus and the Robot.

The Cat Bus is inside and photographs are not allowed inside. The Robot is outside, so I did get my picture taken with it.

My mother, Noriko, Fu-chan and I had a great time. The rest of them, not so much. In fact they complained bitterly.

We had to cut the visit short just so they wouldn't keep complaining!

The best part of the museum is the short film in the museum's theater. I loved it. Fortunately, so did everyone else.

After we left the museum, I can't remember what we did.

I know we had to pack to get ready for our trip to the spa in Nikko.