Sakura Totoro tableware arrives in stores just in time for sakura season【Photos】

Even the Studio Ghibli mascot gets swept up in the springtime spirit.

Like sakura petals falling on the surface of pond, the annual return of the cherry blossoms itself has a ripple effect in Japan. Around the time the pink flowers appear on trees, we also start seeing the return of seasonal sweets, artwork, and interior items with cherry blossom motifs, and this phenomenon occurs at Studio Ghibli anime merch specialty shop Donguri Kyowakoku too.

With the start of cherry blossom season fast approaching, Donguri Kyowakoku is reissuing a number of its sakura Totoro tableware items. While this isn’t their initial offering, they’ve been sold out at both and the chain’s physical locations and online store for some time, and so this is great news for anyone who didn’t get a chance to snag one the last time around, and also for fans who did but are looking to get one as a gift for a friend who’s been hounding them for one of their own.

The restocked items include a pair of bowls, both featuring the beloved forest spirit happily frolicking among the cherry blossoms, with a Makkurokurosuke Soot Sprite subtly hanging out nearby, and even a white small Totoro hiding inside. The larger of the two bowls, pictured above and with a diameter of 12.8 centimeters (5 inches), is, somewhat ironically, listed as a kodonburi, or “small bowl.” Meanwhile, the smaller version, with an 11.2-centimeter diameter and more contoured sides, is a chawan, which translates literally as “tea bowl,” but is in practice a bowl used for rice by itself.

▼ Though there’s no scene of Totoro going out for some cherry blossom-viewing within the anime film, it’s a safe bet that, as a forest spirit, he’d be pretty psyched about it.

Honestly, though you can use the bowls for whatever you feel like, and they’re cute and stylish enough to even use as interior decorations or as storage dishes for non-food items. Also part of the lineup is a mug, whose mix of Japanese aesthetics and Western-style mug make it equally appropriate for a cup of green tea or coffee.

If you’re thinking the pieces all have a particularly appealing rustic beauty to them, it’s thanks in part to their all being Mino-yaki, or Mino ware. Mino was the old name for what’s now Gifu Prefecture, one of the oldest and most prestigious pottery-making centers in Japan with a ceramics history that stretches back over 1,000 years and whose traditions are still caried on by local craftsmen today.

▼ All of the pieces have Tonari no Totoro, My Neighbor Totoro’s Japanese-language title, printed on the bottom.

The chawan is priced at 2,200 yen (US$15), the kodonburi 2,970 yen, and the mug at 2,860, and they can be ordered here, here, and here through the Donguri Kyowakoku online store.

Source: Donguri Kyowakoku
Top image: Donguri Kyowakoku
Insert images: Donguri Kyowakoku (1, 2, 3)
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