Okay, so Matt just posted a picture on his facebook:

And one of his friends, the director of The Bouncer by Square Enix liked it. 

WHY DO THEY HAVE SO MANY COOL FRIENDS?? Between the guy who translated Final Fantasy X and X-2 to the guy working on people's movements in the new Resident Evil game to the famous manga artist that lives around the corner, Matt and Hiroko are friends with everyone in the video game and entertainment industry!!

Jesus.

Anyway, today we went to the Ghibli Museum! For those of you who don't know what Ghibli is, they're the main supporting company of Miyazaki. And if you don't know who Miyazaki is, then it hurts to be your friend. He's the director of many impressive anime movies like My Neighbor Totoro, Naussica: Valley of the Wind, Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, more recently Ponyo, Laputa: Castle in the Sky and Howl's Moving Castle and MANY more. 

This museum was seriously cool. On the first floor they had a whole room dedicated to showing how animation works, with the flashing white light as film whirs by to show how it makes a movie. Of course, now everything is digital, but shhh. 

It's a museum so I couldn't take any pictures, but I did get a brief video of one of their animation machines (will post later). Perhaps one of the best things about being white, blonde and blue-eyed is that people hesitate to tell me if I'm doing something wrong, and I'm learning how to manipulate that while also looking innocent. Ahh, the American way. But then I just apologize and put away my camera, secretly happy that they treat me like a gaijin (foreigner).

But the museum was filled with all these pictures and frames from all of the famous Miyazaki movies. What I found really interesting was that these pictures weren't even behind plastic or some sort of red gate or anything; they were right up on the walls, totally able to be touched. The MORE surprising thing was that it looked like they still weren't touched, and looked to be in perfect condition. Not to mention that still frames worth about a thousand dollars were right within reach, just hanging there.

Japan is weirdly trusting.

And then on the roof was the robot from Laputa, Castle in the Sky, and we got to take pictures of that! 

We took about a mile walk to get there and back, but on the way back we got...RAMEN! Real Ramen! With an egg and pork and noodles where you can add all sorts of ingredients if you want!! (I added a little garlic.) We also got GYOUZA (little boiled or fried packs of vegetables and meat but so much oil is in it that it's not actually as healthy as it sounds)!! But after eating all that ramen I was seriously full, so Matt ended up eating like ten gyouza plus his ramen and then couldn't figure out why he was so full for the following three hours.

Matt and Hiroko are going out for a jog now (I don't DO jogging in sunlight...cue princess dress) and left me a cell phone and key so if I feel like it I could go out. And you know what? I just might. I hope I don't get lost. Or maybe I'll find something interesting if I do!!

Jya ne!