One of the coolest things an obsessive anime fan in Japan can do is seichi junrei, e.g. making a “pilgrimage to the holy land,” which in this case refers to visiting places from your favorite anime series. Whether it’s traveling to Lake Kizaki in Nagano Prefecture, where Please Teacher/Twins was based, trawling the backstreets of Tokyo that provided the setting for Bakemonogatari or communing with moe spirits in the K-On! school (which is a decommissioned elementary school), pretty much every anime these days is based on actual reference locations. Whenever my wife snorts at the idea of otaku traveling around Japan to visit places from their favorite anime, I remind her of her first trip to Rome, when she visited all the places Audrey Hepburn went to in the classic film Roman Holiday, even eating gelato by the Spanish Steps. Obsessions are so much fun! (By the way, we’ve posted a handy guide to visiting famous sites from anime series to the site today.)
You can visit the places in your favorite anime someday.
