How To Get Ghibli Museum Tickets

For foreign travelers, tickets to the Ghibli Museum are like the golden tickets in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — nearly impossible to get. There are lots of websites that list ways to get the tickets, but in practice, none of these methods work. However, there are now two good ways to get tickets: one easy and reliable, and one geeky and very difficult. We’ll introduce both here.

[Ghibli Museum sign © Ben Stiefel | CC BY-SA 2.0]

First, Why Is It So Hard to Get Ghibli Museum Tickets?!

The Ghibli Museum is a small place that is very popular with Japanese and international visitors. Most Japanese buy their tickets at kiosks in Japanese convenience stores or online from the company that operates those ticket kiosks. This requires both Japanese ability and a Japanese cell phone to make the purchase.

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Furthermore, the tickets go on sale 30 days in advance and sell out very quickly. Finally, the ticket purchaser must actually be present in the group that visits the museum. This is to prevent resale of tickets by third-party vendors. For most foreign tourists, these conditions make it impossible to buy tickets themselves.

[Ghibli Museum © George N | CC BY 2.0]

Getting Ghibli Museum Tickets As Part Of A Tour

Sometimes you can find vendors on Klook and Get Your Guide that offer tours which include admission to Ghibli Park. Please make sure you read other customer reviews carefully and be sure you understand the length of the tour and what’s included.

Sunrise Tours offers a Ghibli Museum & Ghibli Film Appreciation Bus Tour from Tokyo. The tour includes transport to and from Tokyo, as well as a stop at the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum. The tour takes a total of nine hours (you read that right: nine hours)! It’s only suitable for diehard fans and probably not good for younger children. The tour costs ¥26,000 per person. Book via the link above. Since Sunrise Tours is part of Japan’s largest and most established travel company (JTB), it’s fully legitimate and trustworthy.

[Castle in the Sky Robot statue © bm.iphone | CC BY 2.0]

Another Way to Get Ghibli Museum Tickets

For those with patience, some free time and a little tech savvy, you can get tickets from the Lawson convenience store site. Here’s the link to the Lawson Ghibli Museum ticket buying page. One of our readers tested the system and successfully bought tickets this way. Here is her account of how it worked:

“How it worked was, I signed on via desktop computer about 15 minutes before the tickets went on sale for March, on February 10 at 10 AM JST. I was greeted with a countdown saying the site would load in 15 minutes. When the timer hit zero the new page started to load without my having to do anything.

Eventually I was placed in a queue that stated I was about person 4400 in line, and my wait was more than an hour. I was a bit discouraged but when I googled that there are 2400 tickets released per day so quickly realized the math was in my favor over a 30 day period.

It ended up taking about 50 minutes to get to the head of the line - I didn’t refresh my screen the whole time. Once the page loaded I had to act quickly, I chose 2-3 timeslots that initially appeared to have availability, but once I clicked through said no longer available. However, soon enough I found a time slot on an available day and requested 2 tickets.

Then it took me to the regular sort of enter information and credit card screen and it was pretty smooth sailing from there. As with all Japanese booking sites you have to read carefully and precisely follow instructions. For instance, when you enter your phone number, make sure to also enter country code, with no + or -, or it will give an error and not really tell you where you went wrong.

Eventually I got the tickets, never refreshing through the loading screens and just waiting. Probably took about 5 minutes from when I made it to the head of the waitlist. There was no surcharge, with today’s exchange rate two tickets cost $13.41 USD. Not bad!”

Additional Information

• Inokashira-koen Park and Ghibli Museum = a detailed walk around the park
• Ghibli Museum is located to the west of Shinjuku district if you want to stay nearby

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