We went to visit Kozugu Shrine on the way to find some lunch and a park. We accidentaly stumbled on to the shrine and were fascinated by the cool stairs leading up to it. It is a neighbourhood shrine but it was very well taken care of and very quiet. There was a little cafe within the grounds but we didn't quite figure out how to order, but that was ok. It was cool to see and visit.
TV took EV for a walk in the morning to get some breakfast stuff and to visit the post office to figure out how to send some packages back with all of our souvenirs. Osaka didn't appear to be an early rising city as most shops were still closed at 9am along the pedestrian mall. We did manage to find a snack along the way and looked at how a highwayis built over the top of a canal. We also managed to figure out the shipping situation in case you were wondering.
After spending all day at Ghibli Park it was time to wrap things up and head back to Osaka. We made sure to check in on My Neighbour Totoro and have a bit of a play at the playground where MV assumed her rightful place. MV was sad because she really wanted to get a fancy necklace as a souvenir but we said no because unbeknownst to her we had got it as a birthday gift. We were really happy with the Japanese oublic transport which helped us to cover the 200kms journey in comfort and in about 2.5 hours, including picking up dinner which we ate on the shinkansen. That was the same amount of time as it would have taken had we driven, the efficiency was fantastic.
We finished up at the warehouse and went on to look at other parts of the park. We stopped in at the gift shop first to see all the cool souvenirs. We went through some cool mosaic decorated parts. We then moved on to the Howl's Moving Castle area.
We continued walking through the warehouse and the various recreations of the famous scenes from the movies. It was really good fun recreating and making up new ways to interact with the scenes.
Inside the park was a big building which attracted the most attention, it was Ghibli's Grand Warehouse. It's a combination of storage space and exhibitions of some of the most famous Ghibli films and props including the Oscar statue for Spirited Away. Walking into the warehouse we didn't quite know what to expect and we were quite pleasantly surprised to see all the fun displays. We really liked the giant garden which we thoroughly explored.
As we walked through Ghibli Park we enjoyed the natural scenery augmented with some fun items. The girls really liked the money bag left on the bench with some wild plans being formulated on how to spend the money. We then went to look at an 'exhibit' which started with a Japanese gate and Tanuki statue. The sign at the begining of the walk encouraged visitors to observe and apreciate the light filtering through the leaves of the various trees. This became our motto for our trip as it was applicable all over the world. We enjoyed the peacful walk and views of the wider park from the top of the hill.
