Tokyo Day 8 (Ghibli)

When I had started planning our Japan trip months ago, I knew the Ghibli Museum was a must see and at the same time, I knew it was one of those things that required planning to get tickets. After reading a few sites describing how it was hard to buy tickets due to timing and internet connections, I opted to throw money at the problem and buy the tickets through trip advisor with heavy markup. I knew they just basically bought the tickets and resold them for us but would go through the effort. But when I got the tickets, the tickets listed the real prices and it was only 400 Yen for Hannah and 100 Yen for Christopher whereas we were charged $45 each ticket regardless if it was an adult or child. Oh that hurt a bit.

In any case, it was because of our ticket on Monday that we had to stay in Tokyo for so long or else we would have headed out of Tokyo earlier. At this point, I think Charles had been in Tokyo for over 2 weeks and had seen almost everything.

We headed out early for our 10 AM reservation and caught the Ghibli bus to the museum which was cutely decorated. There was already a line when we got there at 9:40 of course. 

The outside of the museum

No pictures were allowed inside and since we were one of the first ones in, we immediately went to the viewing theater to watch some films. When we came out, it was already a lot more crowded when we went through the exhibits with a lot of Chinese tourists. The kids enjoyed the little mini catbus playground and we enjoyed the robot statue on the roof. We ended up leaving a little after 11:15 (we tend to do museums quickly - that is one thing that Charles and I are quite in synch on). The park around the museum is really nice so we started walking around the park. Then I realized I had no idea where to catch the bus to go back to the train station and I had bought a round trip ticket. So we ended up just walking back - it wasn't raining at least.

After a quick bento lunch in Koshijochi, we headed back to our hotel to rest a bit. Today was also the first day of our JR Pass and luckily this excursion out to Ghibli was on a JR line! After we rested, we headed back out to Ninja Shinjuku for our early dinner reservation. I booked this the day before while looking for an interesting dining experience and had asked Charles if we should do a Ninja dinner. He scoffed and said "no, that's stupid". But I ignored him and booked it anyways. The kids loved our fishing dinner and I had the feeling they would love this. And all the reviews were great.

We walked in and after a robot talked to us and revealed a secret doorway which amazed the kids, we were led to a small enclosed dining area. Every course was beautifully presented and the kids got a kids meal of fried food which they noshed on.

There was food in here somewhere

Dessert - Everything was edible!

After dinner, a "ninja" came in and did some card/magic tricks for us which was fun. Turns out this Ninja restaurant is a chain and they have one in New York. Hannah already asked if we could go to that one too.