I already had a cold, but hey, I had reservations. So, I rode into the morning sunlight of western Tokyo and had a nice walk through the park.
While I waited for my turn to enter I found a birdwatching section in the park. It was really amazing! The birds were going crazy over there. I've never seen anything like it before. Unfortunately my camera was no good, but here are two that were just sitting in front of me chirping their beaks off...
Not allowed to take pictures inside, etc. You should know the drill by now. I wandered through the place in a a feverish stupor, overwhelmed by how many people were making their way through the tiny, beautiful exhibits. Everything was great, but my favorite bit was an exhibit demonstrating how animation is made with a 3D example of lots of little Totoro models spinning around an axis in front of a strobe light. It was entrancing.
I was lucky-- the movie I got to see was also about Totoro. It was a fairly pointless little story about the little girl from Totoro making friends with a baby catbus, or as she called it in Japanese, a kittenbus. I was charmed, and pleased that I understood all the dialogue. It helped that the target audience was 3 to 5 year olds.
Anyway, I climbed around the maze of exhibits for a while, had a croque monsieur with Australian tourists in the super classy Straw Hat Cafe, and finally bought a tin of cookies. I think I will refrain from mentioning the amount of money I have spent in Tokyo but it is truly outrageous. I don't think I would like to come here to live...
