Studio Ghibli theme park schedules a pair of anime from the legendary director for fans to see this summer.

There’s a timeless appeal to Studio Ghibli, with its anime works having captured the imaginations of young and young-at-heart audiences for generations. But while Ghibli anime always makes for captivating viewing, that doesn’t mean you can always watch them whenever you want to

Studio Ghibli has a series of short anime films that can only be seen at two places, the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo and the Ghibli Park theme park in Aichi Prefecture. These aren’t slipshod throwaway productions, either, as Ghibli’s animators pack their 10 to 15-minute runtimes full of emotion and artistry. Because Ghibli Park and the Ghibli Museum each have only a single screening room, though, the short films are shown on a rotating limited-time schedule, and this summer Ghibli Park will be showing not just one, but two short anime directed by Ghibli co-founder/fabled perfectionist Hayao Miyazaki.

The first of the two will be Boro the Caterpillar, which began screening on May 1 and will run until June 16. The most recently made Ghibli short and Miyazaki’s second-most recent anime (coming before The Boy and the Heron), Boro the Caterpillar is a rare case of Ghibli and Miyazaki making open use of computer graphics to complement their hand-drawn artwork, and it even has a unique sound design, as we experienced when we were lucky enough to watch it.

Taking the baton from Boro will be another Miyazaki-directed short anime film, Treasure Hunting, which will screen from June 25 to July 31 (Ghibli Park will be closed for maintenance work between June 17 and 24).

Both films will be shown at the Cinema Orion inside the Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse section of the park, but summertime visitors will want to also head over to the Mononoke Village area, which is debuting a new activity at its Tatara-ba hands-on learning workshop. Since Mononoke Village’s opening in November of 2023, guests have been able to learn how to make goheimochi, a type of traditional grilled mochi rice cake grilled on a skewer and basted with a nutty-tasting glaze. This summer, though, Tatara-ba is switching things up with a kinako-making experience, in which you’ll learn how to make kinako, a roasted soybean flour with a slightly cinnamon-like flavor that’s used as a seasoning for traditional Japanese sweets. And of course, you’ll be doing this the old-school way, using a stone mill to grind the beans down, just like Japanese confectioners have done for hundreds of years, before sprinkling the powder onto provided jiggly warabimochi rice cakes

There’s a 1,000-yen (US$6.90) fee for the kinako-making activity, which runs from June 25 to September 29 (after which Tatara-ba shifts back to goheimochi). Entrance to Cinema Orion to watch the Miyazaki-directed anime shorts, meanwhile, is included with your ticket to the Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse area. And if you do make the trip out to Ghibli Park, don’t forget that the unofficial (but implicitly OK’d) Ghibli cafe has a new branch near the park opening soon.

Related: Ghibli Park
Source, images: PR Times
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