You could, however, take pictures from outside the house, and being a fairly open-air house, we could still manage to get some nice shots. Turns out, you couldn’t take pictures inside the house, but you could open up closets, cabinets, doors, and such. But it was there.Ī guide walked us from the ticket counter and waiting area to the house, explaining what we could and could not do while checking out the house. The last likely place you’d expect to find Satsuki and Mei’s countryside home. The house is situated in a park, a HUGE park, with a massive indoor swimming pool/water park thing, numerous lakes, baseball fields… It just went on and on. There were 22 of us, a mix of ALTs and Japanese friends. To make things even better, if that’s even possible at this point, tickets only cost 500 yen.Ī friend of mine organized a group to go and made our reservation. Build a replica of the house from the movie, and suddenly, all of our childhood dreams are coming true right before our eyes. Even people who aren’t all that interested in Japan know about Totoro.įor most of us, Totoro, at the very least, makes us smile. I’d be shocked to find someone interested in Japan who doesn’t know about Totoro.
Whenever I hear “Totoro,” it’s pretty much a guarantee that I’ll start humming the movie’s opening theme song.