Today’s question is: What are your lesser-known recommendations regarding manga/anime spots in Japan?
Lots of people travel to Japan to hunt down merch, cafes, and locations dedicated to their favorite manga and anime. What are your favorite spots? Where do you like to shop? Are there any themed cafés you loved? Are there pop-ups you’ve stumbled upon? How about museums or exhibits? We’re looking for **lesser-known recommendations** here. We all know about the Ghibli Museum and Pokemon Centers. But what else do you have for us?
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13 comments
Not sure about this if it’s not mainstream or unknown but Ikebukuro is the hub for female manga/anime fans as well as *doujinshi* (kinda like fan fiction) enthusiasts. There’s also the massive annual Comiket event in Tokyo Big Sight catering to this type of crowd.
Kadokwa museum in saitama.
It was fun
Mononoke’s forest on Yakushima, south of Kyushu. I think it might be more popular than it used to be, but a lot of people still don’t know about it.
There’s also a hidden shrine half way up the mountain towards the forest where Miyazaki got some inspiration for spirited away too. Lots of tiny buildings hidden away in the jungle.
Although I adore manga and anime I do not revel in the fandom much as in visiting „anime spots“.
But two things I found neat was the Kamakurakōkōmae Station, Kamakura from Slam Dunk (and the whole Enoshima lighthouse area) as well as mount takao from Yama no Susume.
TOEI kyoto studio park is one I’m aware of – Power Rangers (Sentai), Fist of the North star etc. They have acting too!
Perhaps ufotable cafe for those KNY fans. One of the few permanent anime cafes, they cycle through different events every couple of weeks, though bookings are lottery-style and very hard to get.
Rather than a ‘spot’, a cute collector’s thing people can do is to go to different JUMP / Mugiwara shops and collect the different stamps from each location. Bring a stamp book or use a goshuincho. Could add it on top of the stamps at major train stations around Japan too.
The thing with most animanga events in Japan are that they’re either (1) time limited or (2) require advance booking, so pretty inaccessible for most travellers who can’t just plan their itinerary around an event nor navigate the appropriate sites/apps/clubs/etc to get a ticket.
Before you go to the Pokemon Centers and Donguri Republic stores, check Don Quijote for licensed Pokemon and Ghibli merchandise. Prices are a bit better and they have a surprisingly decent selection.
* Satsuki and Mei’s Totoro House at EXPO 2005 Aichi:
http://www.expo2005.or.jp/en/venue/experience05.html
Not only the house appearance, it almost replica everything from movie. For example the bathroom, the study (full of books, you can even browse them), wall at backyard, the stairs to 2nd floor (although you cannot go upstairs).
Here are some photos I taken: https://imgur.com/a/zHWjD9j
The area is closed, will become a big ghibli park later this year:
https://ghibli-park.jp/
* OYA History Museum at Utsunomiya
https://www.visit-tochigi.com/plan-your-trip/things-to-do/1005/
It’s a old mining site at Utsunomiya with mysterious feeling. Also the real life location of anime “Ga-Rei: Zero” at 2008:
http://blog.livedoor.jp/seichijunrei/archives/51990326.html
You 100% need to go to Nakano Broadway. It’s basically a mall and on the top level they have literally dozens of small, otaku-focused shops. Some anime, some manga, some jpop/idol, some figures/gunpla. A lot of shops have really rare collectibles. There’s just tons and tons of really cool stuff around every corner. IMO it’s replaced Akihabara as the true Otaku mecha.
I don’t see it mentioned a lot, but the [Narita Anime Deck](https://www.animedeck.jp/en/narita/) is pretty cool if you like merch/character goods. It’s landside in NRT Terminal 2, and it’s a little out of the way, so you might miss it if you’re not looking for it (it’s off to the side on the upper floor).
I only learned about it a few years ago because it has merch from my favorite anime, *Bungou Stray Dogs*. In fact, I got a *goshuincho* there, and I’ve never seen one with anime characters on it before! ([Here’s a picture!](https://i.imgur.com/VIJZqXB.jpg))
This is very specific, but if you’re in to Gundam, the Diver City mall in Odaiba has a massive Gundam section where you can get full sets or individual pieces.
Stuff wise, there’s Book Offs everywhere, I bought used Pokemon Gameboy games for a handful of dollars second hand vs the ridiculous price jack ups we see over here.
But the big ones for me are I’m historical series so I’ve geeked out over Edo-Tokyo Museum and Meiji-Mura, as well as stayed at the Tokyo Station Hotel.
Mine will be lesser known especially as there is not as many people visiting these city as there is people doing the golden route.
Aruaru city in Kitakyushu. Include a manga museum that focus on Reiji Matsumoto, as he is from the area. It also include maid cafe and several manga/anime stores including Melon Books, Mandarake and Animate. It is at walking distance from Kokura station. While in Kitakyushu, you might want to check out different statues and manhole covers of characters from Galaxy railway and Captain Harlock.
Kurayoshi Figure Museum. Kurayoshi is a small city in Tottori prefecture and it is home to the first Japanese factory of Good Smile Company. The museum is built is a circular school (to be honest the building is quite interesting in itself). I got there a bit late and decided to only see their temporary exhibition that also give access to a room more about how Good Smile Company make the figurines, for example showing how the nendoroid face a are printed. And they also had a wall of nendoroid.
The rest of the thing I personally did are either the well known spots or are temporary stuff such as exhibition and pop-up shops/cafe, so better keep an eye open for those.
Otherwise, I would say manga/anime spots in the sense of places features in them, but this really depend on the title you like.
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I’ve visited several manga/anime related exhibitions over my trips and I realize that I have a harder time enjoying exhibition that feature things that I do not know or like. A general exhibition that focus more on the how to create anime/manga can be ok, but let’s say that I preferred a small temporary exhibition about Yotsuba (that I really like) as opposed to a big part of the Manga museum in Kitakyushu, as I do not know much about Reiji Matsumoto.