Solo Trip Nagoya (August 2023) - Ghibli Grand Warehouse Overview

Finally, my time to enter the Ghibli Grand Warehouse arrived. I queued up to enter, and the entrance was rather plain. There was a weird lift there, but I can't remember if we needed to go inside. I think we did, and when the door opened, you were downstairs, arrived to start your journey.

The grand hall was quite a whimsical Spanish looking deco as there were mosaic stairs in the middle of it. there was also a flying wooden plane hanging from the ceiling. The whole place was actually quite small, nothing like a Disneyland. It was, as it's name, a studio.....

I have read up on the place, and true to the source, there were long queues everywhere! People were mainly queuing up to take photos with the Ghibli Characters. The long queue at the grand hall was there all the way till closing time! I know cause I left it to the very last hour to queue for it. I think the studio closes at 5pm, and I started queueing at 4pm after seeing everything else in the studio :P

To avoid the queues, I actually went were it was most empty. The very first place was South Street, which was a row of street with shops decorated in old Japanese fashion. They sell collectibles there and was good for browsing and photo taking. Upstairs from it was the kid's section. There is a photo of it below. And there was also a miniature world of Arrietty which I will show in more detail in later post. 

Above the South Street, which was pretty empty cause there weren't any notable characters there. 

Upstairs was the children's section where a giant cat bus was available for kids to play around and in it. There was a bigger cat bus in another section of the studio. I felt a bit guilty wandering around here as there were signs saying that it was only for kids. But then again, a few adults can also be seen taking photos inside....

Probably the most famous character from Ghibli is Totoro? Well, he has his own bar inside the studio. I really like the setting of this, and you could take photo inside. The bar was classic Japanese style, and Totoro-san was the bartender behind the bar :P

Here's me at the bar :P

There were little memento of the Ghibli movies here and there. Above is one of the forest spirit from Princess Mononoke. If you weren't paying attention, you would hardly notice it just hanging there. I was queueing outside waiting to enter the most popular studio and took a nice shot of it's cute butt !  Lol. That's all for today's post. I've split up the Ghibli post to around 6 different posting as I took so many photos inside. Even though it's just a studio for photo taking, I enjoyed myself very much even though I was there alone. It was quite exciting to see all those Ghibli Characters in life size there. It's kinda like visiting your dream, but while awake. Read on.....