Japan National Tourism Organization made a simple map showing the locales of some popular anime titles and the major anime retail hotspots across Japan.

While an interesting initiative, the map itself is rather light on details, so this is more of a standard tourism brochure with a twist than an actual guide for people looking for information.

Incidentally, I have been to all the areas indicated in the pink section of the map excluding Sapporo, and there seems to be a lot of marketing hyperbole involved for everything that is not in Tokyo or Nipponbashi, Osaka.

Toranoana at Otemachi, Hiroshima

Otemachi, Hiroshima is a just regular shoutengai that happens to have a few shops like Toranoana (large chain of doujinshi speciality shops) and Yellow Submarine (chain hobby store with outlets selling everything from Magic: The Gathering to anime figures to model trains) scattered across it. You can find such loose shop clusters in nearly every major Japanese city and there’s nothing remarkable about the one in Otemachi. Hiroshima is a nice city to visit though.

Yokohama Landmark Plaza has the mainstream brand-name stores for Ghibli and Shueisha that serve as a convenient focal point for the brochure, but you can find a lot more real anime stuff elsewhere scattered around the main Yokohama station, such as a decent-sized Animate and smaller Gamers (the large anime chain store whose mascot spawned the Di Gi Charat series) and Melon Books (doujinshi speciality chain store) branches hidden away inside random buildings. But ultimately, you are better off enjoying the sights and sounds of Enoshima if you find yourself in Kanagawa prefecture. Save the anime stuff for nearby Tokyo. There isn’t much in Yokohama.

The Animate branch in Nagoya stands alone behind Nagoya Station, but everything else is found in Osudenkigai

I didn’t spend much time at Nagoya’s Osudenkigai, but I thought it was about on par with Eastern Ikebukuro and Otome Road in terms of number of shops and level of activity. It’s worth checking out if you are in Nagoya, but it’s definitely not worth travelling to Nagoya for. Well, basically there is no real reason why anyone should visit Nagoya. It’s a boring place.

Classy underpass at Tenjin

The Tenjin area in Fukuoka is a major shopping area with many large vertical shopping centres. If you are in Hakata, you will definitely end up there. As Hakata is the centre of commercial activities in Kyushu/Western Japan, it has the largest regional outlets for Kinokuniya, Animate, etc. The caveat being that they are the largest in Kyushu, which is not really saying much. As far as I remember, there isn’t really any single location where the anime stores are clustered together, so you will just come across some of them as part of normal tourist shopping.

Look for the giant Melon Books sign to find Ota-road

Nipponbashi, Osaka is definitely worth visiting. It is much smaller in scale than Akihabara, but significantly larger than Ikebukuro Otome Road. The important thing to know is that the main road, where the exit for Nipponbashi subway station is located, has nothing but regular electronics stores. You need to find your way to a smaller parallel street, colloquially known as “Ota-road” to find outlets such as Gamers and Toranoana. I believe that K-Books (nationwide chain stores specializing in second-hand manga, doujinshi, goods and collectibles) is the only one with presence on the main road.

And of course, Akihabara, Otome Road and Nakano Broadway are the classics you shouldn’t miss. I find it interesting that the Akihabara blurb features the maid cafe Mai Dreamin, which seems to have materialized out of nowhere and cornered a huge share of the market with multiple outlets in Akihabara and Ikebukuro. I had always thought that @home cafe was much bigger, given that it has a longer history in Akihabara. Perhaps Mai Dreamin is more savvy at marketing. I did notice that they have an “English” version of the pre-recorded advertising blurb they play at their outlet next to Akihabara station.

When it comes to visiting real-life location of anime settings, it is important that you only do it if you enjoy sightseeing by itself. Most anime titles are set in boring, unremarkable small towns and some of them can be quite mind-boggling rural for an urban dweller. For example, Summer Wars is set in Nagano, an entirely unremarkable prefecture as can be surmised from its Japan Guide article. If you travel there just to visit the anime locations, you’d better learnt to enjoy looking at mountains and fruit farms.

On the other hand, the ones set in easy-to-access parts of Tokyo usually feature no landmarks distinguishable enough to actually visit, other that the standard tourist fare: Tokyo Tower, Shinjuku area and Shibuya scramble crossing. That said, I did enjoy how Durarara!! featured Eastern Ikebukuro — one of my favourite places in Tokyo — with many of its familiar details.

Source: scion_cho on Flickr

Also, I love going to the Starbucks on the second floor of Tsutaya across the scramble crossing from Shibuya station. It was featured in an episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and it just looks so iconic.

This is where Kagami and Tsukasa work as miko

Outside of Tokyo, the easiest locations to visit are probably Lucky Stars scenes set in Omiya, Saitama and Washinomiya Shrine. You can cover both in a day trip from Tokyo. Well, and there’s School Days too.

I have been to Hakone a few times, but I have somehow never made the mental connection to Evangelion. Hmm.

It seems like I’ve been going to Japan every year for the past few years due to various reasons, so I guess this should not come as a huge surprise. Yes, I am flying to Japan again. Yes, I will be there for Maaya’s “You can’t catch me” 2011 tour, specifically the one in Osaka.

Come to think of it, this trip makes my waxing lyrical last year seem a lot less meaningful. Heh.

I will be in Japan from 26 March to 16 April. As this will be my final romp in Japan for the foreseeable future, I have gone all out in an insane attempt to cover as many locations as possible in one trip.

My confirmed itinerary so far:

• Osaka
• Kyoto
• Nara
• Hiroshima
• Miyajima
• Fukuoka
• Nagasaki
• Kagoshima
• Ibusuki
• Nagoya
• Ise Shima
• Tokyo
• Kamakura
• Nikko

Still trying to squeeze a few more places in, but this more or less covers every place I want to go to in Kyushu and Kansai.

The sheer logistics of this epic journey is mind boggling. I have been spending a good portion of the past week tabbing between Hyperdia, Google Maps, Japan Guide and Hostel World in order to craft the most complicated tour itinerary the world has ever seen. And they said I was mad.

The awesome thing is that most of the transport costs are covered in a lump-sum I paid for a 14-day Japan Rail Pass. This pass allows you to take unlimited rides on any JR railways, including the Shinkansen bullet trains (but excluding Nozomi trains), for a flat 45,100 yen. This is quite cool because I will need to take the Shinkansen at least ten times to cover that many places in just two weeks and each ride can cost more than 100 USD by itself.

The Japan Rail Pass is so awesome that permanent residents and Japanese citizens are actually banned from purchasing and using it because JR would go bankrupt in a matter of days otherwise. You have to purchase it from JTB or a tour agency in your home country.

Japan Rail Pass purchased from JTB

A tip I picked up from booking my accommodations is that in many parts of Japan it is actually possible to find private single-room business hotels that are similar in price or even cheaper than backpacker hostels in the same area. The catch is that these business hotels are mostly used by locals and bookings are done online in Japanese.

But 2,900 yen a night for a private room with proper facilities does make spending 2,500 yen to squeeze with 5-9 other people in the same dorm room seem like a scam.

Of course, the trade off is that you don’t get the interesting mix of characters one finds in a backpacker hostel nor the tourist-friendly English-speaking counter staff. My own itinerary includes both foreigner-centric hostels and Japanese-centric business hotels. It’s nice to mix things up a bit.

Really looking forward to setting foot on Gunkanjima. It’s like the Disneyland of urban exploration. Already booked my 4000-yen guided ferry tour.

Also hoping to crash a lecture or two at Toudai before I leave. Preferably political science or sociology. I blame too much Tokyo Daigaku Monogatari.

Do drop me a PM on Twitter or an email if you happen to be in Japan around that time and want to meet up for tea. I will be in Tokyo from 9 April to 16 April and Kyushu/Kansai before that. I can show you around Akihabara/Asakusa, which, sad/happy to say, I know like the back of my hand.

Anyway, Mr. Lim is organizing a tour group to Japan…for the Tokyo Game Show! Basically it is a one-week otaku-centric tour package with geeky destinations that include:

• Tokyo Game Show
• Ghibli Museum
• Toei Animation Gallery
• Nakano Broadway
• Akihabara

The duration is from 18th to 23rd September 2007. The total cost of the tour, excluding airport tax, is S$1,600. You can find out more information from the website and this flyer.

For enquiries and bookings, please call 63983686 or e-mail icp@globaltravel.com.sg. You probably will not get any discount for mentioning my blog. LOL.

Damn I’m missing Japan already. Gao… Anyway I just got back from the airport and I’m dead tired. Will blog more when I feel less dead.

Located just outside the east exit of Matsudo Station in Chiba Prefecture on the JR Joban Line is Bandai Museum, a place where all true Gundam fans must go once in their lifetime… and not more than once.

Well, it looks like a big building, but Bandai actually only takes up 4 floors and most of them are merchandizes so the actual Gundam Museum is quite small. Entry to most places is free except for the Gundam Museum which requires a 500-yen day ticket.

Kerokerokero. Kerororororo.

A model of a colony from Universal Century. All the displays in the Gundam Museum are printed in both English and Japanese. If you look at the three mirror structures from the front of the colony, you can actually see the landscape inside.

Creepy mono-eye. This is a 1/1 scale model of the head of a Zaku. The eye switches on regularly and look around, presumably for Federation spies. It even produces the distinctive switching-on sound.

Apparently a Zaku weights about 9 elephants and runs much slower than a cheetah.

You can pay 500 yen to rent a costume and pose in front of…

A 1/1 replica of the Gundam. You can also pay 500 yen to fire a miniature (airsoft) replica of the machine gun of a Zaku. Or you can pay 500 yen to enter the Gundam’s cockpit and then pay another 1000 yen to get a commemorative picture taken…

And if that’s not enough money wasted spent, you can find all forms of overpriced food at the G-style Cafe. G for Gundam that is. There are deserts with names like “Akatsuki no Kuruma” (New York Style Cheese Cake), “Kira no Namida”(Oreo Cheese Cake) and “Lacus no Kyuujitsu” (Chocolate Cheese Cake). There are also Haro cocktails available in four different colours. (Actually Calpis drinks mixed with fruit flavouring) A cheese cake costs about 500 yen and a Haro cocktail is 600 yen. Don’t even ask for the main menu.

Oh yeah, pictured above is “Lacus no Kyuujitsu”. I am a fanboy. :3

And here we have the toilet.

And here are the rest of the photos.

We picked the limited express and it didn’t take too long to figure out that it was the wrong choice… Oh well, you learn from your mistakes. Or in this case, you learn from my mistake.

Nakano Station

It’s only two quick stops from Shinjuku to Nakano Station. We probably wasted more time getting the right line. Getting out of the train, we walk out of the North Exit and find a fairly normal-looking street. Looking around, I see no indication of where Nakano Broadway might be. The map by the station entrance does not have Nakano Broadway labelled. After looking at the map for a few minutes… nope, it’s still not there. It looks like it’s going to rain soon. This could be harder than I thought.

A fierce-looking police officer turns out to be quite friendly (tsundere!?) and points us in the right direction. Directly in front of the station is a sheltered shoutengai that apparently leads right to Nakano Broadway.

It is a typical Japanese shopping street. Too typical.

It’s not long before we see the entrance to Nakano Broadway. We walk in, expecting to find a mini-Akihabara, but the shops on the first floor look normal. Too normal… That is until we hit the Nakano branch of Asobit City and the otaku radar starts beeping.

Well, it’s smaller than its multi-storey shop fronts in Akiba, but it’s a start.

Of course, this is not what I am here for. Moving on to the third floor, we hit the jackpot: Mandarake.

Mandarake is a chain store that specializes in secondhand manga, collectibles, cels, toys and rare and expensive things you can’t wait to sell your firstborn off for. Mandarake actually takes up half a dozen store fronts on the third and fourth floor and each shop sells items of a certain category (cosplay, used manga, cels, etc.).

It’s times like this that makes you wish that your father was a mutli-billionaire.

zOMG it’s rei!!!11 Besides Mandarake, there are stores for used CD and DVDs, manga, cards, figurines, toys, models, posters, cels, anime scripts and sketches and other cute little things to waste your money away on scattered all around the building. There’s a secondhand CD shop selling a huge stack of first pressing Negima! character CDs with pactio cards for 1500 yen to 3000 yen (original retail price of 800 yen). And to think I paid about 6000 yen on Yahoo Auctions Japan for my copy of Evangline’s CD with card. (Then again, my copy is brand new and unopened :P)

Photography is strictly prohibited. Really.

There’s a doll shop in a corner near Mandarake.

That’s Haruka Suzumiya and Mitsuki Hayase from Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and Sakura Shinguji from Sakura Taisen.

And that’s Sakaki Chiduru from Muv Luv and Sakura Yoshino from Da Capo.

I wanted to pick up a cel from Nadesico or Evangelion while I was there, but the cheapest one I could find cost a nice 10,000 yen (roughly 100 USD). Cels for older and less popular series can go as low as 200 yen to 1000 yen. Complete cells with perfect colouring and matching background drawing from a well-known series can make one’s wallet 40,000 yen lighter (which is not a lot lighter since 10,000 yen notes are not uncommon).

There are also stores dealing with anime character design booklets and episode scripts. Design booklets are made in-house by the main artists working on a series and used to standardize character design across a series. Episode scripts are what the seiyuu get. I wonder what a H-anime script reads like… I ended up buying a huge stack of sketches for the Ichigo 100% anime for 2,500 yen. It’s all photocopied (originals sell for a few more zeroes), but the quality is so clear such that pencil marks still look like pencil marks and the stack is huge. It’s a good source of reference material if you draw (which I may someday get back to doing).

Assuming you stay in Tokyo, the best way to get to Nakano Station is to take the JR Yamanote Line to either Tokyo Station or Shinjuku Station and transfer to JR Chuo Line (Rapid). Akihabara might be good for the latest game releases and figurines, but if you are looking for real collectibles that aren’t mass produced in China, Nakano Broadway is a nice place to visit. Of course, there is a price to be paid for being a collector…

P.S. I am blogging on my bed in front of this.

And xxxHOLIC is on TV as I speak type.

And for no particular reason, above is a picture of a half-eaten Dorayaki (as seen in Doraemon) and a half-eaten Meronpan (as seen in DearS and Shakugan no Shana)…

Well, it might seem like a weird place for a Chinese guy to visit, but it’s really a pretty normal tourist area. I’ve seen things like it in China before too and the displays are of course based on one’s intepretation of history… The center of propaganda in Yasukuni Shrine lies in the Yushukan, a museum of Japanese military history.

I watched a 50-minute propaganda video which concluded that Japan conducted a purely defensive war out of necessity due to the injustice done to it by the Western nations. The narrator tells the viewer that Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War gave the people of the colonies hope and led to the eventual crumbling of the colonial system. A display in the museum lists Gandhi as one of those anti-colonial revolutionary, just short of crediting Imperial Japan for India’s independence. Chiang Kai-shek is credited by the movie as a great man who wanted to work with Japan for a peaceful Asia and the Chinese Communist Party supposedly destroy any hopes for peace. The movie conveniently forgets to mention Generalissimo Chiang joining sides with anti-Japan forces later. Nanjing was supposedly a city in chaos after the Nationalist government retreated until the Japanese Imperial Army saved it from anarchy (by killing everyone I guess). Manchukuo, ruled by a puppet government loyal to Japan in Manchuria, was supposedly a peaceful nation built on the principles of racial harmony between the five races. Japan unselfishly sacrificed her men and ammunitions to protect East Asia from the cruel colonial powers in exchange for just a tiny token tribute of raw materials, land, labourers and sex slaves. Such pity to those countries that could not receive the blessings of the Imperial Army because America had to be a busybody and drop the atomic bombs. Such pity.

In the documentary (I use the term in a very loose sense), a young Japanese girl onscreen says that she had never learnt about WWII in elementary school and Yushukan was the first time she learnt about WWII. Any wonders why Japanese people have such a screwed up view of the “Greater East Asian War”? A huge percentage of Japanese school children do not even know which side won the war…

Although our hotel is located in Ikebukuro, it is on the opposite side of the train station from the major concentration of anime-related shops, so we didn’t take the time to visit there until now. (You know, Akihabara and all…)

Tama-nee compels you to read on.

Although Ikebukuro isn’t exactly Akiba, there are still quite a lot of anime goods to be found here. Lashinbang and K-books are not to be missed if you are looking for hard-to-find anime collectibles. From limited edition phone cards to alarm clocks and pillow covers, these shops buy and resell all kinds of limited edition collectibles. If you look long enough, you might find a good deal, such as a secondhand anime OP single for 200 yen or a Tamaki Kousaka wall scroll for 2000 yen. (I bought the only one by the way…) Here’s a picture of Lashinbang and K-books from my previous visit.

I got this Tamaki mug from Lashinbang for 1000 yen. :3

The prices at secondhand collectibles shops are quite unpredictable. Different traders have different pricing based on product rarity, condition and popularity, so it’s better to look around first before buying. For example, K-books was selling a secondhand copy of Rie Tanaka’s Chara de Rie first print for 4000 yen when I found an unopened copy collecting dust in Yamagiwa Soft for the list price of around 2000 yen. On the other hand, secondhand shops are probably the only way you can find items limited to events or preorders, such as limited goods from the latest Comiket. Just be prepared to pay a lot for those rare goods… (6000 yen for a rare phone card of a popular character is not uncommon)

And right beside Lashinbang is the main branch of Animate. Well, you can find one in Akihabara too, but the it’s still nice to visit the main branch. Animate deals manga, anime and character goods, but not much in the way of doujin unlike Toranoana. A picture of Animate main branch from my last visit. (Yes, I’m lazy to take pictures again)

There used to be a Gamers (Dejiko’s birthplace) near the underpass to Sunshine City in Ikebukuro, but it seems to have closed down… Awww…

Anyway, on to Shinjuku. Gah screw it, I’m too lazy, so just look at the pictures.

Kinokinuya here is huuuuge. The South Shinjuku branch has a whole building for itself beside Takashimaya Times Square. The main branch farther northeast has a whole building and an annex of comics and light novels. Interestingly, the annex for the main branch is named “Forest”. Maybe it’s a wordplay of Kinokuniya…? (木の国？)

On another note, I briefly read through a few World War II-related books in Kinokuniya. It seems to me that Japanese accounts tend to focus on either specific battles and the strategic events in the Pacific or the situation of Japan under American Occupation. Out of the entire shelf on WWII, there were only three books on display on the Nanjing Incident. The first book was supposedly an “unbias” account. The second book claimed to be able to prove that the Nanjing Incident never took place using “newly-uncovered Chinese Communist Party documents from Taiwanese archives” (most impartial source of information ever…). The third book was just spouting nonsense about how the entire thing originated from Communist propagandas. Right beside them is a book about how Japanese nationals “forced to remain in Manchuria due to circumstances” suffered in China before finally returning home after many years. And somehow this book is a lot thicker than the other three.

And yes, I was born in Nanjing.

Anyway, enough with the rant, it’s time for today’s loot!

1. To Heart 2 Tamaki Kousaka coffee cup
2. School Days Official Visual Art Works
3. Gundam SEED DESTINY Lacus Clyne Limited Poster
4. Nanoha Raising Heart from Animate (not for me)
5. School Days Sekai-hen novel
6. Kami-sama Game Vol. 1 & 2
7. Hayate no Gotoku! Vol.1

Anyway, that’s all for today~

1. Evangelion COSPA T-shirt
2. Gundam SEED Destiny Limited Posters 3 (took me three tries to get Lacus and Cagalli)
3. Sentimental Graffiti Desktop Collection
4. Valkyrie Profile -Lenneth- for PSP (secondhand)
5. To Heart 2 Tamaki Kousaka doujinshi (18+)
6. To Heart 2 Tamaki Kousaka COSPA tea cup
7. Rumbling Angel Version 6 Starter Deck
8. Gundam SEED Lacus Clyne handphone strap
9. Cafe&Kitchen Cos-Cha handphone strap
10. Kamen no Maid Guy Vol.1-3
11. Suzuka Vol. 4-6
12. Negima! Vol. 4, 5, 7
13. Genshiken Vol. 7

Basically, it’s mostly just some manga that I was missing.

I got BahamutSphere to buy the Tama-nee doujinshi for me. I tried to do it yesterday but the Toranoana cashier asked for identification and I had to give up… gao… But justice always wins in the end! Bwahahaha!

I had tea at Cafe Mai:lish today. It’s been more than a year, but I managed to recognize one of the waitresses there. Mai:lish waitresses wear maid costumes in the noon and cosplay after 5pm. One of them was cosplaying in the seifuku from To Heart 2. The costume was quite well-done. :3 There was another uniform that looked like the ones from Kashimashi, but I’m not sure. And there was a waitress in ZAFT pilot uniform too.

I think that might be enough Akiba for some time.

P.S. Here’re some pictures of the Tama-nee tea cup. Tamaki-moe forever!!! :3