宮崎駿 (Miyazaki Hayao)

Who? Miyazaki Hayao or Hayao Miyazaki in the Western world. Who!? Studio Ghibli of course! What? Studio Ghibli is the world reknowned producer of the great animated movies as My neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Kiki's delivery service and the award winning Spirited Away. Then who's Miyazaki Hayao? He is the oscar-winning co-founder of Studio Ghibli and main animator of above mentioned movies.

So yes, anyway, I'm not good at introductions, but let's just say this man is amazing. Not only are his movies of extremely good quality, he tries to refrain from using computer technology unlike his good friends at Pixar (not kidding, they really are good friends). Now what has this go to do with anything? Everything. Since I met him today.


The press gathering around Miyazaki-sensei.


The talk was held at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan. Fancy Smancy.

Miyazaki-sensei caught me taking a picture. Oops :P


The secretary of the FCCJ could have pretended to be more interested but at least Miyazaki-sensei doesn't seem to mind!


Besides lots of serious questions there was enough time for cracking a few jokes, some at the expense of the Japanese PM Aso. Har har.


Ok ok so I might have exaggerated a bit. I went to a talk by him. He was there, I was there... poteyto potahto. He is an incredible speaker, very knowledgeable about the world, and definitely has his own views and ideas on the deterioration of our society (in particular Japan). He has some very nice ideas too though, like the child care facility at his studio that he designed himself which is both fun, free and stimulating for the kids. He uses them as inspiration and motivation at the same time. An ideologist? Hardly. He is very pessimistic about our (children's) futures.

One thing I would like to share with you that he said is:

"Paradise is our infanthood".

Good night!