How to buy Ghibli Museum Tickets in Japan
Going to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka is almost as difficult as getting into the Emperors palace. There’s no way to buy tickets at the door and even buying them in advance is tough. The easiest way to get them is to go to a Lawsons combini (at a quiet time) and ask the shopkeeper to help you find tickets on the Loppi machine. If you get a nice shopkeeper, and one who knows how to use the machine, they’ll walk you through the process.If you can go on a weekday, there should be no problem, but if you’re restricted to going on Saturday or Sunday, you have to compete with the other thousands of punters who want to go. This means booking far in advance.
You can buy tickets for the Ghibli museum for any of 4 times each day, 10, 12, 2 and 4. The museum closes at 6pm, so as you’d expect, the 4pm tickets are the least popular. The Loppi system is hit and miss, and when I tried it, I couldn’t find a way to look at a calendar and see which days were free. Luckily, there’s a web page which shows the information for the next 2 months. This page is all in Japanese, but the important parts are the times in the calendar and the blue text. An x next to the time for a day means it’s sold out. An o means it’s still available. The blue text above the calendar shows “Ghibli No Hi”, the day the tickets for the following month go on sale. In the picture below, it’s November 12th, a Monday. If you can get to a Lawsons at the time they give (10am) you should have a good chance of buying tickets for the time you want.
No Comments Yet