Road Trip To Miyazaki

posted in: Canada, Motherhood, Travel 0

We’re big Hayao Miyazaki fans in my family!

This past Halloween many of my family members dressed up as various anime characters from his movies.

IMG_7608

Mist as Princess Mononoki, From My Neighbor Totoro: Tabs as Satsukie and Pip as Mai

 First of all, for those who were worried Miyazaki has retired for good, fear not! He didn’t actually retire as promised; he’s already out of his premature retirement to write a Samurai manga.

IMG_7607

 Mist with her Princess Mononoki mask off. I recently saw stills from the anime and was thrilled to see how bang-on the girls costumes are. They truly look like the characters!

 1441354_10152027514038760_2021806053_n

From the Secret World of Arrietty: My niece Nemi as Arrietty.

The cool thing about Miyazaki is that his work inspires road trips. When his latest anime was not showing in our city, I packed up the car with my kids and their cousins and took us on a road trip the town it was playing in. The Wind Rises was a treat. We immersed ourselves in the movie for 2 1/2 hours. Miyazaki movies inspire true phenomenological immersion (studied a little bit about  this phenomenon when I wrote my Masters thesis). Phenomenological Immersion occurs if while watching his anime, one’s imagination is activated and one actually feels as though they are immersed in a Miyazaki world. The great thing about Miyazaki’s animation is that all of his sets have great architectural detail and we felt as though we were transported to WWII Japan for a few weeks.

P3180033
Here we are in Japan (look closely you’ll see Mount Fuji with its snow cap behind us)! Okay, so we are still in BC but truly, the snow capped mountains and Japanese garden were enough to convince even ourselves we were in Japan for the day.

Our road trip included two of my daughters (Tabs was out-of-town visiting an Auntie with her friend) and two of my nieces.
We began our adventure with a stop at the Japanese gardens in Penticton,BC. Penticton is a small city on the far southern end of Lake Okanagan.

P3180036
After a stroll through the garden we had a spring picnic on the beach of Lake Okanagan and then found our way to the theatre.

P3180037The theatre was new and so divine! The seats were extra comfortable and we were the only patrons until the very last moment when 3 others showed up to watch with us. It was bliss because the new comfy seats were so plentiful that we could lie down across the row and watch the movie in recline position.

P3180038
After the long movie, we explored the down town looking for one of Canada’s largest used book stores: The Bookshop. We found it and the littlest members of our crew purchased a few of their favourite books. We stopped for a Starbucks beverage, loaded up the car and headed back home. It was truly a great little escape for the day—we felt we’d travelled to Japan for a time much longer than an afternoon.

P3180040

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *