Since we were nearby, we stopped by Lake Kizaki, the area famous as the location of the Please Teacher and Please Twins anime series. Virtually every scene was based on a specific location in the town, or at various sites nearby, which had the effect of adding a layer of realism to the anime usually not present. It also transformed the rural town into hallowed ground for thousands of otaku, who regularly visit to see and touch and commune with their favorite anime. Judging from the number of fans I saw there, the town’s anime-derived notoriety was bringing in plenty of money for the local economy, and there’s even a day each year when fans will come from far and wide, forming groups that walk around the lake and pick up trash. Some other parts of Japan that have become popular pilgrimage sites for anime fans include Washinomiya Shrine, seen in Lucky Star; the town of Hama in Miyagi Prefecture, where you can visit an exact replica of the shrine from Kannagi; the Clannad town in Tokyo; and Shirakawa-go in Gifu Prefecture, which served as a model for the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni town. so you can act out all your favorite scenes from that happy series. To think that some people say that otaku only think in two dimensions…
It can be fun to visit sites from your favorite anime series in Japan.
