House Hunting

A short film only screened at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. The nine-minute short adapts a picture book by Rieko Nakagawa and Yuriko Yamawaki, the author and illustrator of two previous books that inspired Ghibli shorts (Sora Iro no Tane, The Whale Hunt). A boy named Yuji and his friend Gick, a rabbit, find a walking stick. To decide which of them will keep it, they try a foot race, a long jump and sumo wrestling, but each ends up in a tie. Out of ideas, the children go to Gick's Granny for help. Granny tells the children to go treasure hunting. Who will be the winner?

Ai is a self-reliant girl that moves to Animal Village. She makes friends with the various villagers as she settles into the village. One night as she walked along the beach, she finds a message in the bottle. It sets her off on a quest of planting pine trees around the village to fulfill a miracle on the eve of the Winter Festival.

17-year-old run-away Yui and 8-year-old Hiyori, who lost her family and her voice, have no place to go when they run into Kiwa, a strange old lady. She offers them a place to stay, in a slightly banged-up old house overlooking the sea, a Mayoiga. Despite joining Kiwa on a whim, the two girls find comfort in Mayoiga, a legendary house, said to look after lost travelers, and the warm hospitality of Kiwa. Both girls' damaged hearts begin to heal little by little. Until one day, a variety of strange beings which Kiwa calls “Fushigitto” begin popping up around the house.

On the way to their new home, 10-year-old Chihiro Ogino's family stumbles upon a deserted theme park. Intrigued, the family investigates the park, though unbeknownst to them, it is secretly inhabited by spirits who sleep by day and appear at night. When Chihiro's mother and father eat food from a restaurant in the street, angry spirits turn them into pigs. Furthermore, a wide sea has appeared between the spirit world and the human one, trapping Chihiro, the sole human, in a land of spirits. Luckily for her though, a mysterious boy named Haku appears, claiming to know her from the past. Under his instructions, Chihiro secures a job in the bathhouse where Haku works. With only her courage and some new found friends to aid her, Chihiro embarks on a journey to turn her parents back to their original forms and return home.