You’ll Soon Be Able to Ride Around in a Real-Life Catbus at Ghibli Park
If people didn’t already equate buses and cats due to My Neighbor Totoro, the next attraction at Ghibli Park is just going to reinforce the idea. The Nagoya prefectural government announced on February 9 that the Studio Ghibli amusement park will be getting five real-life Catbuses to drive people around the Expo 2005 Aichi Commemorative Park.
The five Catbuses will be based on Toyota’s electric APM, which will be resigned to look like the creature from the Hayao Miyazaki-directed feature.
The vehicle in question pre-Catbusified
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Governor of Aichi Prefecture, Hideaki Omura, stated that the transportation ”will be another great attraction in the park.” The announcement came during a conference that revealed that the prefecture is allocating another 6.5 billion yen (US$48.57 million) in its fiscal year ending March 2024 budget for the development of Ghibli Park.
The Catbuses are part of this budget, which includes the final funding from the prefecture for the Valley of Witches and Mononoke Village, and are all scheduled to be ready by the end of March 2024.
Source: Asahi
Copyright:
© 1988 Studio Ghibli
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Daryl Harding is a Senior Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram.
