Have your heart warmed at Hayao Miyazaki's Ghibli Museum

The Ghibli Museum is for anyone who has ever wanted to fly alongside Porco Rosso, help Kiki with her delivery service or even travel through the forest aboard the cat bus with Totoro. Hayao Miyazaki's stunning animated works may be intended for the big screen, but his Ghibli Museum out in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka brings his characters and world to life.

And just like his movies, the museum is wonderfully unconventional. There are no set routes: staircases and passageways come and go, and children and adults alike are encouraged to explore from the moment they step inside.

Children can play on a huge stuffed cat from My Neighbor Totoro. A towering robot soldier from Laputa: Castle in the Sky stands in the roof garden. And the rooms on the first floor that are called "Where a film is born" are a child's dream. Cluttered with cameras, model aircraft, cars, chests of gadgets, the writing desk looks ready for a film-maker to start a storyboard sketch. From the ceiling hangs a flying dinosaur and the walls are covered with images from some of Miyazaki's most famous works, including Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle.

Miyazaki's ambition in opening the museum was to show the work that goes into producing a movie and to inspire his visitors. He has greatly succeeded.

The only drawback to visiting the Ghibli museum is the somewhat Kafkaesque ticketing system.

Tickets cannot be purchased at the museum. Use the Loppi automated ticket machine at Lawson convenience stores. Foreign visitors can purchase their tickets through designated travel agencies, with the time and date of museum entry strictly set on the ticket itself.Tickets are available from the first of each month for the following three months.

The pricing is variable by age: ¥1,000 for adults over 19, ¥700 for those 13-18, ¥400 for those between 7-12 and ¥100 for those between 4-6.

For more details on tickets, please visit the museum website.

Ghibli Museum: 1-1-83 Shimorenjaku, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo 181-0013, tel. 0422 40 2233