🎮 Nerd / Pop culture · 52 destinations · 125 activities
Akihabara is the obvious first stop, but Japanese pop culture is spread much wider: animation studio museums, towns that live off pilgrimages to real locations from series, and specialised districts with little in common. Several of the most sought-after visits run on lotteries or bookings weeks ahead, and that shapes the dates of the whole trip.
A neighbourhood devoted to otaku culture, with shops selling figures, manga, and electronics.
Tutelary shrine of 108 Edo neighbourhoods, its vermilion-lacquered hall rebuilt in concrete in 1934 and therefore a survivor of the firebombing. It sells amulets for data and server protection and collaborates with anime series: it is Akihabara's digital patron.
A labyrinthine 1960s mall with around twenty Mandarake stores selling second-hand manga, figures and toys. It is Akihabara for the veteran collector: cheaper and far less touristy.
A thirty-thousand-square-metre studio in Nerima, on the old Toshimaen site, with original sets of the Great Hall, Diagon Alley and the Forbidden Forest. From 6,600 yen for adults, timed entry and booking required.
The largest fanzine market in the world, with hundreds of thousands of attendees and a cosplay area, in August and in late December. A paid wristband is needed for each day, there are queues before dawn, extreme heat in summer, and no photography outside the cosplay area.
A stretch of Higashi-Ikebukuro given over to manga, doujinshi and merchandise aimed at a female audience, with the Animate flagship store next door. The exact counterpart to Akihabara.
Japan's public broadcasting archive is in Yokohama and it is free: more than forty thousand programmes, newsreels and commercials that you request at the desk and watch in individual booths, from 1960s dramas to legendary ad campaigns. Open 10:00 to 17:00, with requests taken until half an hour before closing, and closed on Mondays. It sits on Nihon-odori with direct access from the station.
The series is explicitly set in Yokohama and the city runs recurring official stamp rallies through Cosmo World, the Air Cabin, the Marine Tower and Kannai. Outside campaign periods the location route still works on your own.
The collection Nobutaro Hara built over sixty years, with hand-made gauge 1 locomotives and a huge layout that runs on real metal rail, so the trains actually sound like trains. It costs 1,500 yen for adults, 1,000 for students and 750 for children from four; closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, open 10:00 to 17:00. Tickets must be bought in advance online or at a convenience store terminal, not at the door. It is five minutes from Yokohama Station.
The character most loved by Japanese children under six has his indoor park here, with a ground floor of shops and restaurants that is free to enter. Tickets are bought for a set date and time, and outside that age range it makes little sense.
Seven original streetcars from the network that ran until 1972, kept in a hall with their doors open so you can sit in them, plus a large model layout of the city and simulators. Admission 300 yen for adults and 100 for children; closed Wednesdays and Thursdays, open 9:30 to 17:00 at weekends but only 10:00 to 16:00 on weekdays. It is out in Isogo and you need a bus from Negishi: it is not walkable.
An underground theme park set in 1958 Japan, featuring replica ramen stalls representing regional styles from across the country.
Kamoi Kakoshi, the Kurashiki company that invented decorative washi tape, opens its factory just once a year, for two weeks in March or April, turned into an art installation. Advance registration and a lottery.
Japan's first denim museum, opened in 2003, with sewing machines from the 1960s; next door you can try on the school and sailor uniforms the city manufactures. Both are in Kojima.
A tiny, deliberately absurd museum about the legend of the peach boy, full of optical illusions and homemade tricks. Okayama claims to be the setting of the tale.
Devoted to the illustrator of Candy Candy, in a Bikan house decorated as a pink salon. Originals are on show and there are photos to be taken in princess dresses. Confirm the opening hours before going.
Oarai is the setting of the anime 'Girls und Panzer' and has built half its tourist economy around it: some 50 life-size panels of the characters, each one 'adopted' by the real shop in town that hosts it, spread along the Magarimatsu shopping street.
Free room in the ferry terminal with dioramas, fan illustrations and objects from the series, plus a themed café in the port tower.
Spring festival at which real Self-Defense Forces tanks are displayed in the middle of the street, the physical extension of the anime phenomenon.
Around eighty per cent of Japan's plastic model kits are made here: Tamiya is headquartered in the city along with the Gunpla factory, there is an exhibition hall devoted to the hobby, and robot statues stand around town.
The classic anime about the girl Maruko is set in 1970s Shimizu; the shopping centre at the port has recreated her house, her school and her neighbourhood.
The major annual Japanese modelling fair, in mid-May; only some days are open to the general public and a ticket is required.
Three-car sightseeing train between Tadotsu and Oboke, with themed spring, summer and autumn chapters and a seasonal menu served as it climbs the gorge. It runs only on Fridays, weekends and public holidays, and booking is required.
A double and very homemade museum at the Oboke service area: upstairs, the valley's monsters recreated with a quiz and picture-card theatre; downstairs, minerals, fossils and meteorites that explain the geology of the gorge. In 2008 the district was recognised as 'monstrous heritage to be handed down to posterity'.
One of Japan's most famous end-of-the-world stations: no access road, at the bottom of a ravine, with a compulsory switchback and the only entirely wooden station building JR Shikoku has left. You reach it on foot along a path of about 25 minutes.
The valley is dotted with wooden figures of local monsters and a stele dedicated to the Konaki-jiji, the old man who cries like a baby, born here and popularised by Mizuki Shigeru. The legends began as warnings to keep children away from ravines and rivers.
A 131 m hill above Uji, also called Buttokusan. The climb starts from the Sawarabi path, next to Ujigami shrine, and takes about 20 minutes on a wide, gentle track; 40 to 60 minutes there and back. Free and open with no set hours. From the viewpoint you see the Uji river, the island of Nakanoshima and the roof of the Byodo-in. It is one of the recognisable settings of the series Hibike! Euphonium, which is why there are people climbing up at sunset; coming down in the dark without a torch is a bad idea because the path is unlit.
A former school of 1869 with 300,000 volumes on open shelves: take whatever you like and read it sitting on the lawn.
Kyoto's equivalent of Akihabara fits into a few blocks between Teramachi-Kyogoku, Shinkyogoku and Kawaramachi: Animate Kyoto, Mandarake, second-hand and retro video game shops, and arcades above the covered shopping streets. It is an afternoon circuit; almost everything opens around 11:00 and closes between 20:00 and 21:00. Notice: the Kyoani & Do Shop, the physical store of Kyoto Animation, has closed; the brand now sells only online and through partner shops and sets up occasional temporary stands, so if anything listed it as open, it no longer is. The Kyoto International Manga Museum, already in the catalogue, is 15 minutes away on foot and is the natural complement.
Opened in October 2024 in a former company factory in Uji, 20 minutes from Kyoto: from 19th-century hanafuda cards to the Switch. Admission is assigned by draw well in advance. It is not a booking: it is a monthly LOTTERY. Applications open three months before the month of the visit and the result is published on the 1st of the following month; a Nintendo account is required, payment is by credit card only, and photo ID is checked at the door, a passport for foreign visitors. Photography is not allowed in the exhibition rooms of building 1. If places are left over after the draw, tickets are sold on a first-come basis.
Uji is the real setting of the Kyoto Animation series and is now the most walked anime pilgrimage in the prefecture. The core spots are concentrated along the river: the bench facing the Ikawa pumping station on the Ajirogi promenade, which appears again and again in the series, the Uji bridge, the Asagiri bridge, Ujigami shrine and the Daikichiyama viewpoint. Half a day covers about 10 spots on foot; a full day stretches to 20 including the walk to the school, and there is a long 38-point route that reaches the competition halls in the city of Kyoto. The Keihan company runs a joint campaign with the series in autumn, with decorated trains. A note on conduct: a good number of the spots are private homes, shops open for business and a religious precinct in use, and the school that inspired the one in the anime is a working school with classes in session; do not go in and do not photograph pupils.
A period film set still in use: you walk through Edo streets built for shooting, with ninja shows and samurai costume hire.
Alongside its bear collection, it has an officially licensed permanent exhibition of My Neighbor Totoro, Catbus included.
Three museums of optical illusion paintings designed for photographing yourself inside the pictures, a staple of Japanese family holidays.
One more in the plateau's improbable cluster of private museums, this one devoted to vintage cars.
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