While exploring Karuizawa we found this little shop filled with Ghibli merchandising. The shop and the building itself has a look and feel very “ghiblish”. I recommend visiting Ghibli Museum if you are a fan, but if you never have enough of Ghibli you can keep spending money in shops like this one in Karuizawa: Google Maps
My mother with Totoro
Elentari , a girl from the United States has created an amazing Howl’s moving castle cosplay. It looks so real that it could be used to make a movie. I love that in the pictures it looks like bigger than it really is, if you look carefully you will find out the real dimensions of it 🙂
One of the most valuable life lessons I learned from my parents is very simple: walk. They both love walking, it is probably one of the things that keeps them together after been married for 30 years. They came to Japan last March and I decided to organice a NOT very typical Japan trip for them: I just rented a place in Karuizawa for one week and made no plans at all.
Karuizawa is a very mysterious place, it feels like a portal to a different country. I’m sure Isao Takahata visited Karuizawa several times when he created the anime Heidi, Girl of the Alps.
After several days walking through the forests getting lost into the myst we kept discovering new places that would excite us. Every day we would venture farther away and we would get familiar with the surroundings of our area. The bridge we crossed on our last day stays in my memory, it is the farthest point we reached during our stay.
There is magic and wonder in those moments when we step into a location we have never been, it must be encoded in our genes. Life is about walking, exploring and when you get lost you will find new paths.
Keep walking.
Practical trick to get lost: put your phone in plane mode and of course don’t use google maps 🙂
