In the Japanese Studio Ghibli animation film My Neighbor Totoro, sisters Satsuki and Mei immerge into the wonderful world surrounding the forest spirit Totoro. This is quite tense at first, but they quickly learn that fear can disappear by laughing, making room for wonder and kinship with the environment. In their work for Wageningen Environmental Research, researchers Zoë van Eldik and Lian Grabijn explore the relationships between people and nature in different ways. Like in the movie, they too discover how wonder and optimism can be a possible answer to a crippling awareness of the imbalance between humans and our neighbour: the nature.