Studio Ghibli theme park to open this November in Japan, presumably just to taunt us

Today, in news designed to make you Google things like “flight times to Nagoya Japan,” “COVID-19 infection rates,” and “Does hugging Totoro reduce COVID-19 infection rates”: Studio Ghibli has announced that its long-anticipated theme park based on its celebrated films will have a soft opening on November 1, 2022.

News about the park, which is being constructed within the Expo 2005 Aichi Commemorative Park in Nagoya, has been circulating online for a few years now, taunting all of us who have ever fantasized about eating that magic food from Spirited Away and being transformed into blissful, anxiety-free pigs in a Miyazaki wonderland. The park will reportedly feature five areas based off the studio’s films, with the My Neighbor Totoro area being the first to open.

Subsequent areas will focus on films like Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Howl’s Moving Castle, allowing us all to enjoy the pleasures of being cursed by a dying god as a parable on man’s evils toward the environment. On that note: Variety reports that one of Hayao Miyazaki’s conditions for this whole theme park project was that no trees be cut down for its construction; the focus will reportedly be on walking paths and smaller rides, rather than big rollercoasters.

In fact, Miyazaki, despite supposedly being “hands-off” on this whole thing, has apparently been decidedly not that, per joking comments that Ghibli producer Suzuki Toshio made at the park’s groundbreaking back in 2020. “He can’t leave anything up to other people. He’s a meddlesome old man.”

The park is a collaboration between Studio Ghibli, the local government, and a nearby newspaper. Officials said they expect as many as 1.8 million visitors to the park per year once it’s fully opened; the Studio Ghibli museum, in western Tokyo, consistently sells out within hours of its tickets going on sale every month.