My Neighbor Totoro
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49 free My Neighbor Totoro trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
My Neighbor Totoro is Hayao Miyazaki's 1988 film about two sisters, a sick mother, a rickety country house and the enormous, sleepy forest spirit who lives in the camphor tree next door. It opened on a double bill with Grave of the Fireflies, sold modestly at first, then grew into a global icon: Totoro became Studio Ghibli's logo, topped Sight & Sound's list of the greatest animated films, got an asteroid and a velvet worm named after him, and in 2022 became a Royal Shakespeare Company show that broke the Barbican's one-day ticket record. These 49 questions cover the film and everything around it: the Kusakabe family, the soot sprites, the umbrella at the bus stop, the Catbus and the flying top; Kazuo Oga and Joe Hisaishi; the Streamline and Disney dubs; the Chinese release 30 years late; Mei and the Kittenbus; and praise from Roger Ebert and Akira Kurosawa. Easy questions cover the sisters and the spirit; the hard tier asks about Fairlight synths and Saitama satoyama. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a family movie night.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote and directed My Neighbor Totoro?
Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki. He was turned down when he first pitched the idea in the early 1980s, and it reached the screen only once it was sold to its backers as half of a double bill.
Q 02Totoro was its director's follow-up to which film?
Castle in the Sky
Castle in the Sky. After that fantasy of sky pirates and a floating island, the director set his next story in the Japanese countryside of the 1950s, before television had reached its homes.
Q 03What is the family name of Satsuki and Mei, the sisters in My Neighbor Totoro?
Kusakabe
Kusakabe. Early concept paintings, and even the film's best-known poster, show the family with only one daughter; she was later split into big sister Satsuki and little Mei.
Q 04What is the father's job in My Neighbor Totoro?
University professor
University professor. He travels in to a university in Tokyo, which is why his daughters are waiting at a country bus stop on the rainy night his bus home runs late.
Q 05Why does the family in My Neighbor Totoro move to an old country house?
To be near the mother's hospital
To be near the mother's hospital. The story echoes its director's own childhood: his mother was ill with spinal tuberculosis for years and spent the first of them in hospital.
Q 06In My Neighbor Totoro, what are the soot sprites called in Japanese?
Susuwatari
Susuwatari. The name means roughly 'travelling soot': Granny says the sprites only haunt empty houses, and the same creatures turn up again hauling coal in Spirited Away.
Q 07In My Neighbor Totoro, what kind of giant tree does Totoro live inside?
Camphor
Camphor. The giant tree stands in an old Shinto shrine, ringed by a sacred straw rope, and the girls' father takes them there to bow and thank the forest's guardian for looking after Mei.
Q 08What does Satsuki lend Totoro as they wait at the rainy bus stop?
Her father's umbrella
Her father's umbrella. Totoro is so delighted by the patter of raindrops on it that he leaps into the air to shake a whole shower down from the trees.
Q 09What does Totoro give Satsuki in return for her kindness at the bus stop in My Neighbor Totoro?
A bundle of nuts and seeds
A bundle of nuts and seeds. The girls plant them in the garden, and a few nights later Totoro arrives at midnight to help the patch burst into a towering tree.
Q 10What is Totoro wearing on his head to keep off the rain when Satsuki first sees him?
A large leaf
A large leaf. It is the giant's only shelter from the downpour, and seeing him dripping beneath it is what prompts Satsuki's act of kindness at the bus stop.
Q 11What does Totoro take Satsuki and Mei riding on after their midnight dance in the garden?
A magical flying top
A magical flying top. The biggest Totoro sets it spinning and everyone hops aboard for a ride across the countryside; by morning the giant tree has vanished, but real sprouts have come up.
Q 12In My Neighbor Totoro, what is Mei carrying when she gets lost?
Fresh corn
Fresh corn. Mei means the ear as a present for her mother, and at the end the girls leave it on a windowsill for their parents to find, without ever showing themselves.
Q 13In My Neighbor Totoro, what discovery makes the villagers searching for Mei fear the worst?
A child's shoe in a lake
Q 21Which Hollywood studio produced Totoro's star-cast English dub in the mid-2000s?
Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures. The studio had to wait for the licence on the older English dub to run out in 2004, so its own version did not reach DVD until 2006.
Q 22Which real-life sisters voice Satsuki and Mei in Totoro's 2000s English dub?
Dakota and Elle Fanning
Dakota and Elle Fanning. Elle's first screen job had been playing a younger version of Dakota's character in I Am Sam; here the two finally got to play sisters.
Q 23Which veteran voice actor supplies Totoro's roars in the 2000s English dub of My Neighbor Totoro?
Frank Welker
A child's shoe in a lake. Satsuki is fetched to look at it and sees that it isn't her sister's, then runs to beg Totoro for help.
Q 14Which film shared the original 1988 double bill with My Neighbor Totoro?
Grave of the Fireflies
Grave of the Fireflies. Each film was thought too risky to release alone, so a tragedy about two children in wartime Japan shared its ticket with a gentle countryside fantasy.
Q 15Who composed the score for My Neighbor Totoro?
Joe Hisaishi
Joe Hisaishi. He built the stage name from Quincy Jones: the characters for 'Hisaishi' can also be read 'Kuishi', close to the Japanese for Quincy, and Joe comes from Jones.
Q 16Satsuki, the elder sister in My Neighbor Totoro, has an old Japanese name for which month?
May
May. Satsuki is an old Japanese name for the fifth month and Mei is the English word in Japanese form, a leftover from early plans in which the sisters were one girl.
Q 17The name Totoro comes from little Mei's garbled version of the Japanese word for which storybook creature?
A troll
A troll. Mei can't quite manage 'tororu', the Japanese for troll, and Satsuki asks whether she means the one in their picture book of the Three Billy Goats Gruff.
Q 18What colour is the smallest of the three Totoros in My Neighbor Totoro?
White
White. Mei spots the little white one in the garden first, and chasing it and its blue companion is what leads her into the hollow where the big grey Totoro sleeps.
Q 19Which real child did the director of My Neighbor Totoro use as his model for four-year-old Mei?
His niece
His niece. She grew up to marry an animation artist, who revealed in a 2011 interview that his wife had been the model for Mei.
Q 20Totoro's first English dub was made as in-flight entertainment for which carrier?
Japan Airlines
Japan Airlines. For four years the only way to hear Totoro in English was aboard one of its flights; the same dub finally reached American cinemas in 1993.
Frank Welker. Totoro has no lines, only roars, grunts and yawns, and the job went to an animal-noise specialist best known as the voice of both Fred and Scooby in Scooby-Doo.
Q 24Shigesato Itoi, the Japanese voice of the father in My Neighbor Totoro, is best known abroad for creating which Nintendo game?
EarthBound
EarthBound. Itoi was known as an advertising copywriter, not an actor, when he voiced the girls' father, and a year later he released the first game in the series Japan calls Mother.
Q 25Which US channel showed My Neighbor Totoro in January 2006 as part of a nine-film tribute to its director?
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies. The home of old Hollywood gave January 2006 over to nine animated films in tribute to the director, at a time when they had hardly been seen on American television.
Q 26By 2018, which source had earned My Neighbor Totoro over a billion dollars, far more than its cinema run?
Licensed merchandise
Licensed merchandise. The film took only a few million dollars on its first run in Japanese cinemas, yet Totoro toys and goods had brought in more than $1.1 billion by 2018.
Q 27In which country did My Neighbor Totoro finally reach cinemas in December 2018, thirty years after its release in Japan?
China
China. Long-running political tension with Japan was blamed for the wait, and when it opened Totoro became the first Studio Ghibli film ever given a cinema release there.
Q 28What does Satsuki and Mei's father do in the bath to chase away their fear of the creaking old house?
Burst out laughing
Burst out laughing. He tells the girls that laughing makes fear run away, they join in, and the soot sprites slip out of the house that very night.
Q 29In which magazine's 2012 critics' poll of the greatest films was My Neighbor Totoro the highest-placed animated film?
Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound. No animated film made the British magazine's top 100 in 2012, when Totoro led them at joint 154th; in the 2022 poll it climbed to joint 72nd.
Q 30Which Chicago film critic included My Neighbor Totoro in his 'Great Movies' series?
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert. He praised it as a children's film with no villains and no fight scenes, one that 'depends on a situation instead of a plot'.