Tickets first, then food
Ghibli Park is ticketed by date and time slot, sold in advance, and the popular areas sell out weeks ahead. The food plan follows from the slot you get: a morning slot means eating in the city the night before and breakfasting light; an afternoon slot leaves the morning free for a kissaten and an early lunch on the way east.
Buy the tickets before you plan anything else about the day.
Getting there is the constraint
Ghibli Park is inside Moricoro Park in Nagakute, at the end of the Linimo — a short magnetic-levitation line that starts at Fujigaoka, itself the eastern terminus of the Higashiyama subway. Nagoya Station to the gate takes about an hour with one change. That hour is the reason most people eat in the city at one end of the day.
Inside the park
There are a few counters and one or two sit-down places, and they are the only options for several kilometres. They fill up between noon and one. If you are on a timed entry ticket in the morning, eat before you go in; if you enter in the afternoon, eat after.
Fujigaoka, on the way back
Fujigaoka is where you change trains anyway, and it has an ordinary suburban restaurant strip — ramen, curry houses, family izakaya — that is far better value than anything at the park. Getting off here on the way back costs nothing extra and turns a change of trains into dinner.
Or make a day of the east side
The Higashiyama line runs through Hoshigaoka, Kakuozan and Imaike before it reaches Fujigaoka, and all three are worth stopping at. Kakuozan has a temple approach with old sweet shops and newer bakeries; Imaike is where Taiwan ramen was invented and stays open late.
With children
Family restaurants in Japan are better than the name suggests, and the ones along this line have high chairs, children’s sets and non-smoking floors as standard. Small independent shops often cannot take a pushchair at all — the ones in this guide list their seat count, which is the honest way to judge whether you will fit.