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Comments
Which I guess makes sense, given the population density such things probably spread easily.
Needless to say, their areas of personal spaces are much smaller than you'd think.
Going by personal experience, it's a nice place to visit but a tedious place to stay. The food is tasty, the streets are clean, the girls are pretty and the weirdness must be seen. But at the same time, you must walk everywhere, it's impolite to eat in the streets, and it's frightfully costly.
I don't know, people go on holiday in all sorts of places for flimsier reasons. Like all the people from Denmark who, at least used to, go to Malta just because it's sunny and near the ocean. Not saying that is all there is to the island, but that it's why a lot of people go there. I really don't have a problem with someone taking a holiday somewhere for whatever reason they may wish. Why is it more legitimate to go to Japan to see the temples than to see Akihabara? Now, that being said, it would obviously be better to be interested in Japanese history and culture if you're taking a holiday there, but it's not a necessity. However, even the most ardent weaboo will probably get bored of Akihabara rather quickly, because it really isn't that interesting. Every anime-store has the same damn things. I'll suggest Kyoto over Tokyo in a heartbeat.
Therefore I would not necessarily suggest going to Japan, unless you have an interest in Japan outside of anime/manga/gaming, since that interest would really only carry you so far. Now, if you just like travelling and meeting people on top of said interest, you can still go and have a great time, at least you have one specific reason for going there, which is more than a lot of people going on holiday and a lot of those people still manage to have a good time. So, I would suggest that people think twice about it, not because I think there is anything wrong with wanting to go to Japan because you like it's pop-culture, but because if you only like it's pop-culture there is a good chance that the actual place will be uninteresting to you.
I am currently living in a smallish-town in Fukuoka-ken and if I buy stuff from supermarkets I don't really find the prices to be that bad. In fact for quite a lot of stuff (mostly certain vegetables that are more expensive) it's cheaper than at home, and eating out is much cheaper than at home. Then again I'm from Denmark, which has one of the highest price-levels in the world, so that probably doesn't say much.
I've been living here for about half a year and am honestly really enjoying myself. I am going home in another half a year. I probably wouldn't want to live here permanently, the social policies are to capitalistic and the work environment is far to concerned with people staying at work for as long as possible, regardless of whether they are doing anything productive in that time. However, I could certainly think of far worse places to live. But yeah, if you want to live in Japan just because you like anime and think you will somehow experience things related to anime here - don't. You'll be disappointed. If you however come here with a general interest in Japanese culture, that is both history, society, cultural activities, movies and/or anime, along with an interest in trying to learn the language and an interest in living in a foreign society you can have a good time, I know I am.
I forgot to mention that I only went to Tokyo, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
That's pretty much what I would assume. I wouldn't even be able to stand the dense metropolis for long, much less adjust to anything else for the long term.
What. At least I can enjoy hot dogs in Times Square.
I think this is the gist of what I was thinking, said in a less critical way. That said, in light of some things I read in the trope page for The Red Stapler, such as this:
...I wonder just how much pop culture tourism there is; there might very well be more than I first thought. That said, I'm still relatively certain there exists nothing like an animé Disneyland, unless Pokémon has its own theme park (I can't remember if it does).
It might have to do with you living in a small town rather than a large city. I am not sure how spread-out things are where you live, but I would imagine that gas prices (and parking spaces) are probably rather prohibitively expensive for city-dwellers to wander out to take advantage of lower prices.
^ See, the Lucky Star thing? That terrifies me. I don't care how much money surprise tourism might bring to my sleepy hometown -- a tide of creepy otaku large enough to make the city council seriously consider changing public dress codes to humor them is fucking mortifying.
I'd say it says more of the city council than of the amount of visiting otakus. Eh, Japan.
That would be like people visiting Mystic, CT for Mystic Pizza.
Which actually exists, btw. However, it's much less prominent than you might think.
It'd be closer to Hell, Michigan going beyond selling weird T-shirts, and issuing a public dress code of dark robes. There's a difference between merchandising merchandise, and merchandising the populace.
Oh, and the difference between getting mobbed by random tourists who think it's funny or want good pizza, and getting mobbed by (once more) creepy, obsessive otaku.
I wonder what Forks, Washington is doing to milk the Twilight series.
IIRC it offers tours of public locations that resemble the film sets.
@Bee: whaddya expect? It's Japan.
@Bee: Well, I sure as hell hope they DON'T change the school uniform to that used in the series; that would lead to at best more unwanted attention and minor emotional scarring of children and at worst an increase in creepy stalkers and possibly real-life incidents.
re: anime tourism; If I remember correctly, the elementary school that was used as a model for Sakuragaoka High School in K-ON! is frequently visited by otaku, and actually has a room set up for K-ON! merchandise and instruments that fans donated.
That whole Lucky Star thing is unbelievable. I really would not have suspected something so stupid to be going on.
what the hell
lucky star isn't even all that great
FTFY.
To quote a Japanese language teacher dealing with anime otakus:
"There's more to Japan than a bunch of goddamn cartoons!"
It's actually pretty sad how accurate this is.
...
Well, it helps to keep the population down, I think.
there's a little bit of dantes in all of us
That's not true. That's IMPOSSIBLE!
Dantes actually said that?
Well, he's even more of a buffoon than I thought.
I don't know if he actually said he wanted her to be his waifu, but he frequently wrote self-insert fanfics where he hung out with her. It was quite the creepy something.
^^That's a recurring thing? I saw him do it once before he was banned and I thought it was some sort of one off in-joke I was missing out on.