Seiritsu International Education

Studio Ghibli Museum!

Today started off with everyone jumping right into the Japanese lesson. Yano Sensei's intermediate group of Justine and Marvin seemed to be covering a wide range of topics from music to memory recall, while the Richard Sensei's beginner group of Jessica and Angeline learned how to introduce themselves in Japanese.

During the mid-morning break, everyone checked emails in the school's computer room. One of the Japanese girl's studying in the room seemed to know the passwords to log into the school's system, which was very nice of her.

For our late-morning daily Japanese culture class, we were graced with the wonderful presence of the Principal's wife, Mrs. Haruko Fukuda, who is a Japanese shodo (calligraphy) teacher.

Mrs. Fukuda led everyone through the basics of how to hold the brush, how to make strong and cursive strokes, plus how to give one's calligraphy a sense of purpose.

When she liked what she saw, she drew a big swirling circle in red over it (which is a shodo teachers way to mark something is correct, plus to pretty it up!), or she drew over one's lines to show how to improve on one's next attempt. She seemed quite pleased and made lots red flower images out of the many red circles she put on the student's efforts.

The kanji characters covered were hana (flower), yume (dream), ryuu (dragon), mizu (water), and hooseki (jewel).

For lunch, the school cook Akakura-san made spaghetti and hot dogs, which surprised the students, perhaps they were expecting more Japanese food (yesterday was chicken kaarage, small sausages and rice mixed with vegetables). But at the school, the Japanese students have several choices each day of freshly cooked food ranging from curry and rice, spaghetti, soba or udon noodles, kaarage (dry fried chicken) and then something different each day, which could even be several Chinese food dishes.

Then by 12:30pm, we were off to the Studio Ghibli Museum (pronounced ji-bu-li). This is the home of the world famous animator Hayao Miyazaki, the creator of the wonderful anime movies My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away (which he won an Oscar for) and Howl's Castle to name a few.

From Akabane station near the school, we took the JR (Japan Rail) Saikyo train to the world's largest train station, Shinjuku-eki, used by over 3 million people a day on about 13 trains. From Shinjuku we rode the JR Chuo line west to Mitaka City, where there are special Totoro Neko Buses (neko means cat) waiting outside to take people to the museum.

Totoro selling tickets!

The museum itself was a magical place, enjoyable for both young and young at heart! Everyone is greeted by a huge Totoro at the entrance gate, sitting inside a ticket booth. The museum's motto is 'Let's become lost children together.'

The entrance of the museum.

The buildings of the museum are sort of like an expanded hobbit house, with many rooms, each filled with a theme. One is how animation is created, showing individual pages used for creating a moving image (pages are called cells), plus there were models which are either stationary or spin rapidly with strobe lights to create the illusion of motion.

The kid's play room with a huge neko bus! Marvin (and Richard!) were tempted to dive into the fun, but there was a height restriction - little people up to our knees allowed only... :(

Other rooms are filled with interactive characters, re-created sets how an old animator's studio would look like, various sizes of animation equipment on active display, plus two rooms simple with large Ghibli characters to play on for kids.

There was a short 16min film that was showed in a theater, called Kujira-tori (Whale Hunt) about some Japanese kindergarten boys who make an imaginery boat out of large building blocks inside their school. But somehow water flows in and they end up floating out to sea and befriend a whale. It was interesting to see how the kindergarten kids all worked together, their sweet and polite approach to being organized was sort of symbolizing that great Japanese desire for everyone to work as a harmonized group. Seeing it portrayed on-screen by these little school kids letting their minds run wild was a treat.

Our Japan Experience student's reactions to the museum ranged from being just super, over-the-moon happy to be there (like Marvin who's a huge fan of Miyazaki) to others being intrigued by the wide variety of creativity, to simply the sense of the magic of the premises.
All seemed to be in agreement is was well worth the visit!

Coming back to the school at day's end we took some time to walk through Shinjuku station to see the multitude of standing noodle shops, drug stores, coffee shops and countless newsstands, all within side the gates.

Walking back from Akabane station to the school to meet the home stay families, we kept bumping into regular Seiritsu students on their way to the station to go home after basketball practice or summer studies. The Seiritsu students, especially the girls, are very friend and it seemed like several conversations were sprung up with different groups just simply walking back to school.

Again, it seemed we had another great day, definitely living and breathing as one with the city. And soooooo many Japanese people were jealous we got to go to the Studio Ghibli Museum during a working day! Actually we made sure to buy little presents from the gift shop to keep those home stay smiles coming our way