Day 15 Ghibli Museum, Tokyo Sky Tree

Sam
Okonomiyaki last night was delicious. We had it Osaka style with cheese. It was huge so some of us couldn't finish. After we were done, we went back to the hostel and packed. Bed was earlier than normal so we could wake up at 5 the next morning to catch the Shinkansen to Tokyo. The ride was more than 5 hours so we did our best to catch up on sleep then.

Upon arriving in Tokyo, we put our big bags in coin lockers and split into two groups: one that went to Tokyo Sky Tree,

and one that went to the Studio Ghibli Museum. My group was the latter. The Ghibli museum was an incredible place. We saw all sorts of cute Totoros and other famous figures. We watched an adorable short too. It's amazing how Ghibli can make adults feel like kids again! Ghibli also had a section that showed some of the older methods of video making such as stereo graphs. We got to see a recreation of Miyazaki's work area too. There were reference books everywhere so that he could make his adorable characters more lifelike. They also had a huge number of his drawings on display which really showcased the detail he put into his work. 

After the museum, we went to Akihabara - a city filled with interesting items and duty free stores. We met up with the other group there and quickly headed for the capsule hotel to check out our rooms. The hotel stank terribly but there wasn't much we could do.

We had a very special dinner at a Japanese restaurant where we were joined by three gusts: Asuka (a foreign exchange student to North High School who just returned), Matt (a junior at UW Madison who has a summer internship in Japan), Evan and Morgan (both are currently participating in study abroad programs). Matt, Evan and Morgan are all former students of Nagai sensei, so it was cool hearing about what to expect in collage. Dinner was on Darryl and Nagai sensei so we all ate our fill.

After dinner, we all went to karaoke together and had a blast!