Our Favorite Magical Creatures Live at Ghibli Park, So We Had to Go

One of our first infractions at Ghibli Park was hoisting our 1-year-old onto the polyester tummy of a woodland spirit creature. Another was letting him slip beneath a barricade and shelter inside a furry bus with cat eyes for headlights.

“He’s not following the protocol,” I instructed my spouse, because the employees overseeing the cat-bus play zone seemed on anxiously.

“He’s making a mockery of it,” she mentioned. But we didn’t cease him.

Ghibli Park, which opened in November exterior Nagoya, Japan, pays homage to the eccentric, enchanting movies of Studio Ghibli, an organization co-founded within the Eighties by the director Hayao Miyazaki. We took our two toddlers there as a result of their favourite film is “My Neighbor Totoro,” a beloved 1988 Miyazaki movie starring the spirit creature and its cat-bus sidekick.

As mother and father, we thought it could be enjoyable for our boys, 3 and 1, to expertise a “Totoro” immersion. And as longtime Ghibli followers, we have been eager to see what the place seemed like.

American guests could surprise how Ghibli Park compares with Disney World. It doesn’t actually. It feels a lot lower-key and has no rides, unique animals, jumbo turkey legs or animatronic American presidents, amongst different issues. The essential level is to wander round absorbing Miyazaki vibes.

Also, the park isn’t completed. Grafted onto an present municipal park, it opened late final yr, however as of early July solely three of 5 deliberate ticketed websites have been open. When I booked for a June go to, tickets to solely a kind of websites — a constructing known as “Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse” — have been obtainable to worldwide guests reserving by way of the park’s web site. (It was doable to e book the opposite two websites by way of Japanese journey companies, however I solely discovered that a lot later, from a Japanese speaker.)

Susan Napier, a biographer of Mr. Miyazaki at Tufts University who visited Ghibli Park in April, instructed me that it had struck her as a “work in progress.” She additionally described the ticketing course of, which has included lotteries and lengthy on-line queues, as “byzantine and not fun.”

Maybe because of this Studio Ghibli itself appears ambivalent about selling Ghibli Park. In Japan, it has run ads advising followers to “take your time” visiting.

A hypothetical theme park celebrating Nintendo or Pokemon, two different iconic Japanese inventive manufacturers, would virtually definitely really feel extra Disney World-like, mentioned Matt Alt, the writer of the 2021 e book “Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World.” But he added that the park’s diffuse format and low-key advertising have been in character for a studio co-founded by Mr. Miyazaki, a director who has by no means hidden his anticapitalist politics.

Ghibli Park isn’t a spot to “turn your brain off,” Mr. Alt instructed me. “It demands a level of intellectual engagement that most parks do not.” When I booked our go to, in March, a little bit of psychological stimulation sounded good. I imagined wandering the grounds in dappled daylight, musing on Mr. Miyazaki’s cinematic oeuvre as our boys paused to gather acorns — simply as the 2 sisters who star in “Totoro” do. (The boys, who’re Anglo-American, love the acorn scenes a lot that they discovered the Japanese phrase for the nut, donguri, earlier than the English one.)

In actuality, we arrived simply earlier than our three-hour afternoon visiting slot at Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse, and our mental capability was restricted. Our parental nerves have been fraying from the hourlong journey from Nagoya and the overall wrestle of transferring tiny, diapered people round an unfamiliar place.

Our morning in Nagoya had already been tarnished by a 4 a.m. get up and a few public shows of unchecked toddler emotion. On the grounds of the seventeenth century Nagoya Castle, for instance, our 3-year-old, nicknamed T, burst into tears when he discovered that the citadel was closed for renovation.

To break his temper, we took the emergency measure of shopping for him and his brother, nicknamed B, ice cream cones as a second breakfast. That stopped the crying, however our mounting fatigue had raised the stakes for our go to to Ghibli Park. Would the journey to fulfill our favourite magical creatures make on a regular basis, cash and power that it entailed worthwhile?

Ghibli Park may even see a bump in home tourism this summer time as a result of Mr. Miyazaki launched a brand new movie in Japan this month. But, for my household, making a pilgrimage there was all about seeing Totoro and the cat bus.

“Totoro” follows the 2 sisters, Mei, 4, and Satsuki, 10, as they settle right into a spooky home within the Japanese countryside with their father, an archaeologist. Their mom is caught in a close-by sanitarium, affected by an undisclosed sickness.

After Mei meets Totoro by stumbling into its lair inside an enormous camphor tree (and falls asleep on its tummy), she and her sister encounter the creature just a few extra occasions and study extra about its magical powers. Eventually, as their mom’s situation seems to worsen, they name in some essential favors from Totoro and the wild-eyed cat bus.

Professor Napier instructed me that “Totoro” illustrates an aesthetic that runs by way of the Ghibli catalog, and which tends to be extra ambiguous and refined than Disney’s. She described it as “the immersive, low-key magic of being a human being connected with other things.”

“It’s a world that you like,” Professor Napier, who’s writing a e book evaluating Ghibli with Disney, mentioned of Mr. Miyazaki’s animated universe. “But it’s also full of the unexpected and complex, and sometimes scary.”

Totoro and the cat bus can certainly be just a little scary, particularly once they flash their enamel. But the film is far sweeter than it’s scary. It’s set in “a time before television,” as Mr. Miyazaki as soon as instructed an interviewer, and infused with chic, hand-drawn pastoral imagery — pastel sunsets, a snail crawling up a plant stalk — that makes you wish to be a child rising up in rural idyll.

The movie additionally celebrates a baby’s sense of surprise. Mr. Miyazaki created “Totoro” with youngsters in thoughts — he mentioned he hoped it could make them wish to choose acorns — and plenty of critics have seen it as an ode to childhood innocence. It’s no accident that Totoro and the cat bus are seen solely to the sisters, not adults.

Maybe because of this I nonetheless cry each time I watch the ultimate credit roll: “Totoro” jogs my memory that my boys won’t ever be this younger or harmless once more.

In our Seoul condominium, they play with Totoro and cat-bus dolls, sleep in Totoro pajamas and sit on a Totoro potty. Their fandom is so intense that my mother-in-law purchased us tickets to a “Totoro” stage adaptation on the Barbican Theater throughout our final journey to London.

In Nagoya, earlier than we left for Ghibli Park, B demonstrated his enthusiasm by bringing a plastic cat bus to the lodge buffet — and feeding it a breakfast of whipped cream. He additionally confirmed the toy to a person in a ninja costume who posed for a selfie with us exterior the citadel.

The ninja cracked a understanding smile, indicating that he, too, was a “Totoro” fan. “Cat bus,” he mentioned in Japanese, as if the phrase have been a code phrase.

Ghibli Park lies in Nagakute, a small metropolis within the hills exterior Nagoya, just a few stops down a freeway from an Ikea. There’s no Ghibli entrance gate, precisely; you simply wander into an unremarkable municipal park and go searching for the Ghibli websites for which you will have reserved tickets months upfront.

The Grand Warehouse is a modern, multistory constructing the scale of a modest mall or sports activities enviornment, with loads of sunshine streaming in by way of skylights. It sits close to a grassy garden, an ice rink and a few future Ghibli websites which are beneath development.

Inside, there are replicas of buildings from the movies, together with the towering bathhouse from the Oscar-winning 2001 movie “Spirited Away,” and dozens of made-for-Instagram tableaux of Ghibli scenes and props.

The consideration to element is hanging. In an space dedicated to the Ghibli movie “Arietty,” I noticed an enormous drop of plastic dew affixed to an enormous faux flower, for instance. Nearby was an intricately detailed duplicate of the citadel from “Howl’s Moving Castle,” my older son’s favourite Miyazaki movie after “Totoro.”

“The castle, daddy!” Three-year-old T mentioned with delight. At final, a Japanese citadel that didn’t make him cry.

The drawback was that many of the tableaux have been mobbed with Ghibli followers — and contours that we didn’t have time to face in with stressed toddlers. The constructing’s solely restaurant was equally oversubscribed. We finally discovered a kiosk promoting cake, however the employees mentioned that the cake had run out.

After about an hour of canvassing the warehouse, we headed for “Children’s Town,” a play space dedicated to scenes from “Totoro” and different Ghibli movies.

Children’s Town has three rooms. The first is a labyrinth combining scenes from extra Ghibli movies than I may depend: The orange prepare from “Laputa: Castle in the Sky,” the bakery from “Kiki’s Delivery Service” and so forth. The boys liked it, even when daddy thwacked his head following them by way of a crawl area.

The different rooms have been dedicated to “Totoro” and had mercifully greater ceilings. There was the home the place Mei and Satsuki stay with their dad. Over there was the camphor tree, the place an enormous Totoro lay regally beside some oversize donguri. And within the far nook sat the majestic, furry cat bus.

It all seemed enjoyable, kid-friendly and immersive — virtually, actually, like one thing you’d discover at Disney World. The boys have been in heaven.

“Toe-toe-row! Toe-toe-row!” B mentioned, standing contained in the tree, with the identical intonation because the film’s rousing, marching-band-style theme track.

“Hey, Totoro!” mentioned T, who had been fastidiously inspecting the large acorns. “Wake up!”

But regardless that Children’s Town appeared designed to nurture the kid’s sense of surprise that Mr. Miyazaki celebrates in his motion pictures, the warehouse employees knowledgeable us of a number of guidelines that dampened the vibe. Notably, it was forbidden to place youngsters on Totoro’s plush tummy, or to permit them to play contained in the cat bus zone for longer than three minutes — even when the zone was not crowded, which it wasn’t.

The employees members have been pleasant, however their guidelines made little sense for teenagers as small as ours. I questioned if that was one other signal that Ghibli Park was nonetheless a bit tough across the edges. Take your time visiting, because the studio says.

We grudgingly agreed to the no-tummy coverage, however B wished to play nowhere else however contained in the cat bus. We have been with him. We had spent a number of months — a superb chunk of his life! — ready for this second.

The employees, sensing our resolve, advised a compromise. A particular time extension might be granted beneath the circumstances, they mentioned. Rather than the standard three minutes, our B may have six.

Make that 9. Then 12. Et cetera. At 5 p.m., he was amongst final, and smallest, Ghibli followers to go away the constructing.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and join our weekly Travel Dispatch publication to get knowledgeable tips about touring smarter and inspiration to your subsequent trip. Dreaming up a future getaway or simply armchair touring? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023.