Advance tickets are absolutely required and tough to get for Tokyo’s Ghibli Museum, but on certain summer days there’s a special event for the ticketless too.

Tokyo’s Ghibli Museum is an undeniably great place to visit. A charmingly whimsical building filled with wonderful works of art and Studio Ghibli anime shorts such as the My Neighbor Totoro semi-sequel, the only drawback is that you have to reserve your tickets in advance, weeks ahead of the date on which you’ll be visiting and with a very narrow window of availability, as each month’s batch quickly sells out.

The upside to this system is that it keeps the museum from feeling overcrowded for those who were able to plan ahead, but the downside is that if you couldn’t grab a ticket before they were all snatched up, or if you’ve had a sudden change in circumstances and suddenly find yourself with free time in your travel itinerary that you didn’t expect to have, you can’t just pop on over to the Ghibli Museum and see all that’s inside.

But it turns out there is a way to enjoy a little part of the Ghibli Museum even without a ticket.

Pictured above is the Ghibli Museum’s Summer Stand, or “Natsu Yatai” as it’s called in Japanese. This is an outdoor stall set up on the perimeter of the museum that anyone can use, and which sells drinks, snacks, and a selection of Ghibli merchandise such as plushies, hats, hand towels, and fans. Among the refreshments on offer are ice-cold Raumune soda, Japan’s favorite old-school summertime soft drink, and Donguri Castella, the little acorn-shaped cakes that are usually only sold inside the museum.

▼ Donguri Castella photo, from the 2021 Summer Stand

▼ Video of the Ghibli Museum Summer Stand in 2022

Again, you don’t need a ticket to shop at the Summer Stand. All you need to do is show up and bask in the feel-good vibes of being together with other Ghibli fans.

Ah, actually, there’s one more thing you’ll need to do, which is to check the calendar, since the Summer Stand isn’t open every day. The top tweet in this article, posted on Sunday, July 28, says that this year the Summer Stand will be open on weekends and holidays. In the low-key style that characterizes most of the Ghibli Museum’s announcements, they don’t mention until what date the stall will be run, or what hours it’ll be open (though with the museum itself open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., it’s safe to assume that the Summer Stand’s hours are somewhere within that time frame), but still, it’s encouraging to know that you can still make a little Ghibli Museum memory even without a ticket.

Related: Ghibli Museum official website
Source: Twitter/@GhibliML
Top image: Studio Ghibli (edited by SoraNews24)
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