GGB San Antonio’s September Ghibli Studios Brunch!

For the month of September, San Antonio’s GGB girls traveled to the land of Hayao Miyazaki’s films produced by Ghibli Studios!

Our group was excited and ready from the word go for our second GGB Event, as 98% our available Catbus Seats (“invitations to attend”) were filled out, enthusiastically, within hours of Tickets being available. All of our brunchettes were excitedly talking, weeks early, about how they were ready and had plans for helping out this time.

“You cannot alter your fate.
However, you can rise to meet it.”
– Princess Mononoke, 1997

The Ghibli Studio’s brunch was held at Fujiya Japanese Garden Restaurant and Sushi Bar, in a reserved back room, where our geek girls of all accord were invited to dine in proper Japanese style, with their shows off and themselves on a raised platform where there were tables on the floor, with chairs and pillows.

Meals were ordered beforehand at the request of the restaurant and it made it a breathlessly fun, easy task for our girls to show up, bedecked in their Ghibli-related costumes and t-shirts, bearing Ghibli toys and brilliant smiles, starting with oohing and ahhing at their gift bags and color sheets.

Ordering drinks, we got down to the business of discussing our favorite films, both new and old, by this genius filmmaker while working on our first project — paper cranes and frogs and Totoros, as brought by one of our amazing officers.

“When someone creates something with all their heart,
then that creation is given a soul.” – The Cat Returns, 2002

The shining star surprise of the creation of the San Antonio GGB continues to be the crowd-funded grab bags. Where the bags had blown away all hopeful dreams of what it might be during the inaugural Harry Potter brunch, it totally knocked us off our Delivery Service Brooms at Ghibli!

There were brown bags with red ribbons or Ghibli characters drawn on them, and inside them were — Totoro headbands, Totoro keychains, soft-felt magnets of No Face & Calcifer, tiny glass bottles of rock candy & Soot Sprites, fluff ball Soot Sprites, candy-cake Soot Sprites, a Calcifer car decal, Green Tea Kit-Kats & Crunch’s, a Haku Art Print, buttons with art/quote combinations, and pinnable perler beads of large Totoros, small Totoros, and Calcifer.

They were all done by separate women of the group, hand-made or purchased, almost all pieces exclusively created for The GGBSATTX Ghibli Studios Brunch.

After all the delicious food was eaten and drinks were drained, after all the papers with colored or folded, and toys were played with and friends were laughed with, we joined together outside to say our “goodbyes, so longs, until next months” and to take a group shot for the month.

My heart is stronger, now that you’re in it.
– The Secret World of Arrietty, 2010