A taste of anime

Some of my housemates and me went on a "house-trip" last week. We decided to visit the Ghibli Anime museum in Itaka. It seems that a lot of Westerners who are interested in Japan, have a great interest in anime. I've never been too into it so far and honestly know very little about it, so I was interested to learn some more. Ghibli is the name of the premiere anime studio in Japan, by the way.
The museum building as such is already quite a sight. A fairy-talesque form and surrounded by a large garden with numerous anime hero statues, it makes a great location as a "place of worship" for anime. Unfortunately the building and the park are the only thing you can take photos of, the museum's interior is off-limits to photographers.
The museum shows how anime technique evolved from the former model based set-up to computer animation. A few of the models used for the older anime were on display, it's quite cool to see how they used layered 3D models to create a more spatial visual effect.
On the second floor there was a recreated drawing studio and a recreation of the Louvre. Haven't really understood the latter's relevance to anime though... There were also small rooms where you could watch anime excerpts. I really have to catch up on this, that would make the museum more interesting as I didn't understand many of the references to films. Still, the museum is a lovely place and worth a visit. Besides buying a cute "Totoro" (obviously a pretty famous anime figure) keitai pendant, we had a hard time resisting the incredibly delicious-looking strawberry cake in the museum café... But dinner was near.