arncyn / Cynthia Arre

Easily one of the greatest highlights of our 2006 Japan trip is our tour of the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka Inokashira Park, Tokyo. The museum houses an exhibit of the process of making animated films the Ghibli (pronounced Jiburi) way and screens exclusive-for-the-museum short films (although I’ve seen quite a few sprout up on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=iS0dZFx_TcQ”). If you’re a Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki film fan, visiting the museum at least once in your life is an absolute MUST! The tour and most of the signs inside the museum is in Japanese but trust me, you don’t need to be able to read them to appreciate what’s in store.

You can read my in-depth review (with photos and how-to-get-there tips) here: http://bauzon.ph/cynthia/ghibli-museum
and on my Squidoo lens: http://www.squidoo.com/ghiblimuseum/

We have rellies in Oz so I’ve been to Sydney twice already, in ‘91 and in ‘94. Everything else is fuzzy but I remember watching “The Phantom of the Opera” at the Royal Sydney Theatre once. i also remember eating a lot of chips – fish and chips, scallops and chips, crab and chips, etc. I also remember the beautiful architecture of the Queen Victoria Building. It’s a very lovely country but don’t go just to shop—malls close really early! 5pm I think. But they close a bit later, around 8 or so, during weekends. In the pic above is me and my younger brother Calvin petting a kangaroo in the wild outdoors.

I love Japan! The very first country I ever travelled to is Japan… I was about 6 or 7 at the time. Since then my family has been going back and forth. In the 90s, my dad and bro lived there for three years because my dad was offered a visiting professor post at the Univ of Tsukuba. My mom and I would visit them every year back then so I’ve gotten familiar with the place. The photo above of me and my hubby was taken at a gorge somewhere in Northern Ibaraki sometime last October 2005. :)