One of the more enjoyable aspects of watching anime in the 21st century is seichi junrei or “making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land,” fanspeak for visiting locations from famous anime series. Pretty much every anime these days is set in a real place, and if like you can hunt down all the actual location spots for Steins;Gate in Akihabara, search for Menma in the town of Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture or even explore the windswept seaside town seen in the Air anime and eroge (though sometimes you can take anime location viewing too far). While anime locations are usually in some far-off corner of Japan, you never know when they’ll turn up in surprising places, like when I learned that Nichijou just happened to be set in J-List’s hometown of Isesaki (the Daiku Burger restaurant is a stone’s throw from my office window), or the episode of I Have Few Friends in which the characters go to a pool that I’ve taken my kids to many times. Sometimes people in other parts of the world can get in on the fun, for example a J-List customer who was overjoyed to see the gorgeous anime Fractale was based in her hometown of Galway, Ireland, and fans in London can explore the K-On! movie locations. The other evening I started watching the innovative horror film Paranormal Activity and was surprised to see that it was shot in San Diego, not far from my home there.
It’s fun to make “pilgrimages” to famous places.
