Last edit: 9/9/23

Final Update (9/9/23): This guide no longer works - Japanese phone number verification is required. It was good while it lasted. 🖖🏻

Update (3/9/23 B): Apparently there is a LOT of traffic for the international site and others are reporting that purchasing through this original method still works (see comment from Damien on the right→). You might have better luck with this method if you can’t access the international site! Note: tickets sell out fast - within 12 hours of release, the tickets on the international site were sold out.

Update (3/9/23 A): THIS GUIDE MAY BE OUTDATED. There have been reports of a new process or site for international visitors (https://l-tike.com/st1/ghibli-en/sitetop) which should not require VPN. Please follow the steps there and note that some instructions here are now irrelevant; however, feel free to continue to reference tips here. I will no longer be updating this guide. Hope this has been helpful!

Update (1/6/23): I successfully picked up my tickets at Lawson and was able to enter the Ghibli Museum! Make sure that the name on your account matches your identification - if you have someone else purchase the tickets, they require at least a photograph of their ID (saw a family get pulled aside).

DISCLAIMER: Purchase processes may change in the future - this is currently confirmed to have worked for December ‘22 - Mar‘23 tickets.

  1. Use a VPN: I use ExpressVPN ($12.95/month - you can cancel auto-renew) and set location to Tokyo. It’s intuitive to use and you will need to connect to a Japanese VPN to complete the sign-up flow and purchase tickets. /r/rhue223 also had success with Windscribe. If you’re seeing "A system error occurred. Please try again later.” the request might be timing out; try using a different VPN.

Browser: You may also want to use Microsoft Edge (some users had trouble purchasing with Chrome). 2. Sign up for a Lawson Web account: https://l-tike.com/login/newcustomer 1. A confirmation email will come from l-tike_mail; make sure to check your spam/promotions filter if you don’t see it within 2 minutes 2. Use Google Translate on the next form. If forms or certain aspects of the website seem broken after translation (ex: can’t click calendar dates, certain buttons aren’t clickable) - try translating back to Japanese and then interacting. 3. Note that the site takes forever to load… especially with each submission. 4. I entered the address of the hotel I’m staying at and used its postal code (ex: “1040061”) 5. You should not need to verify a Japanese phone number with the Lawson pick-up; I entered my US number with no problems. You can also enter your hotel’s phone number. 6. Enter your first and last name with a space in-between in the first field - if you’re having trouble with the input being accepted, you can use an encoder such as this one: https://dencode.com/en/string/character-width Your name should look something like: “Ｊｉｌｌ　Ｓｍｉｔｈ” 1. You can leave the ‘Kana’ field blank as it’s not a required field; you can just put your full width name in the Kanji field. 2. Make sure this is the name you have on your identification! The museum will check that the name on the ticket matches your ID at the gate.

  1. Navigate to https://l-tike.com/ghibli/

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  2. Select the time period you are booking for

    1. Tickets release every month for the subsequent month on the 10th at 10AM (Japan Time). (ex: today is November 9th (PST) and so the tickets for December 12/1 - 12/26 were released.)

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  3. Scroll down and choose your preferred date and time-slot. Recommend booking earlier in the day if possible, lines to get inside are longer in the afternoon and they limit the number of folks inside.

    1. Circle and red font means it’s open
    2. X and black font means it’s unavailable
    3. Triangle and red font means it’s still available but is getting limited

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  1. After hitting “Application” you’ll be prompted to login to the Lawson WEB account you created in step 2.

    1. Some users have reported password issues… You should get a password reset in this case. Speculation: it’s possible there’s not a 1:1 mapping to characters/kana and complex passwords are failing verification.

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  2. Google translate the silly captcha 😉

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