Monday was a one of those time locked days. Where you have certain things at a fixed time like Studio Ghibli and our dinner plans. Michaela and Reuter are staying near the imperial gardens and Veronica and I are staying more north near akihabara. (That disappointing electric town) so every night I will check which station our first event is at and we meet there at a specific time. I planned this trip so it usually fell to me to deal with these things. Well this one we met at a midpoint because Veronica chose it. I thought she had looked up where the studio was and made an informed decision. Nope. She guessed. Thankfully it was a midpoint we could meet up at. Michaela and Reuter were 10-15 minutes late (like usual, even though we purposely gave them an earlier time because we knew). They showed up with Belgium Waffles but still, late is late. I personally forgave them but time was ticking and I have my dad's habit of being on time and anxious if I am not there when I said I would be. So after trying to find the special Ghibli bus (to no avail.) we walked through the park/ran till we found it. Thankfully it was no problem and they scanned our 12pm tickets and we each got little film strips! Mine was Kiki on a broom. I did not recognize Veronica's or Michaelas, but still really cool! We couldn't take pictures inside, as per the rules, but there was a spiral iron cage like spiral that I climbed, and in the room was the huge cat bus that kids can climb on! (Have to be under 12) it came up to about 4 feet high at least! It was very impressive. Walking around there was lots of stained glass of spirited away, totoro, kikis, and others. Second floor had the model work studio that you could walk through. Lots of character design and water color pictures hung up. Plus drafting of the original pitches for these movies. It was beyond amazing. Downstairs on the first floor was a special theater for a "show" of something never released from Ghibli and you could only find in this museum. It was a witch who eats a lot of eggs and one won't crack. So she turns it into a Slave chef. One day while kneeding bread that bread comes alive. While the witch is sleeping they sneak out. Then the witch hunts them down and the dough man is baked and suddenly huge and ripped. The bread man gives her some of his bread and she leaves. The egg and man leave on an adventure. It was strange and had no words. But I loved it. We bought some things in the store as then we walked around the park, it was beautiful and was not cold out. I cannot believe it's the middle of December. I'm in fall clothes still. Not a speck of snow in Tokyo. We had rain only. By the station we split with the other two and we had ramen. It was beautifully arranged with nori lining it. (Seaweed) originally I wanted to go to the robot restaurant but it doesn't open till five pm and you need a reservation. Things the internet and hostels or any guild book do not tell you. So we followed the instructions we got from the hostel to find two chopstick places. We wandered over an hour and half looking for these shops without any luck. We could not find it with GPS or a map. So we gave up and went back to the hostel to rest and warm up with some tea. We left for dinner around 8pm and got to the correct station around 8:50pm. We accidentally missed our spot because we were listening to our favorite musical hit songs like Chicago, wicked, rent. And we watched the doors close and then we looked at eachother and said. Hmm that was our stop, oops. Well train mistakes happen, and if that's the worst we have done? Not bad. "Tokyo" has jr trains, rapid trains, subways, multiple ones, so transferring, getting on the right track, and local vs express are all concerns. We have gone in the wrong ticket side and have to explain our situation to get to the otherwise without buying new tickets so many times. After having the hostel fix the dinner mess and various emails we finally has reservations at the Ninja restaurant. It's entrance is marked by a single lantern on the side of a building, and when you step into the place, it is dark, wooden, basically an underground fortress. Our attendant calls a ninja, and through a side door he appeared. Dressed in a ninja uniform with weapons and appropriate theatrics. He led us through a maze, preformed ninja skills and eventually we found our own enclosed ninja cave. It was cosy and then the madness started. We had to order off the preselected courses which were pretty expensive but it was about eleven things. Goose liver with bamboo charcoal shurrikens to eat it with. There were things that caught on fire, scallions with ginger sauce, noodles, seaweed wrapped chicken, and so much more. The desert for me was this cheesecake frog with fruit hidden inside. It was a full meal and I was amazed at how little each course was, but beautifully presented and tasted. Halfway through the meals we were introduced to a master ninja. His name, he said, was flying horse, so we could call him Pegasus. He did card magic tricks and guessing games. It was very cool, and we enjoyed our dinner side entertainment. When we left the restaurant, one of the ninjas followed us out and quickly unravelled a scroll. It has Japanese but ment to give us good luck, and the other said merry Christmas! It was a great farewell and I recommend anyone to go here. They're very considerate to English speakers or people like us with little Japanese!
