Lucky Star Comparison

As with K-On!, I went around as a tourist, not specifically out to make accurate comparisons, and the photos just happened to match… or they don’t even match. I “cheated” on some, for example, the bus is just a regular bus, going to Mt Fuji instead of Kyoto.

The pair of images below are of Tokyo Big Sight, where large events are held, such as Comiket (in Japan, more commonly referred to as Comike).

Kyoto

The shots of the river are at the wrong point of the river. The actual location should be a few kilometres up the river. The river is called the Kamo River and has bridges every few hundred metres.

Kyoto Animation

I was originally planning to go to Kyoto Animation on the way to other shrines and temples, but it’s actually not on the way to anywhere. It’s not that far though, only a few stops past Fushimi Inari Taisha. One tip for Fushimi Inari: it’s probably better go to Fushimi Inari last because if you plan on doing the whole walk, it will take the better part of the day and you probably won’t have time (or be too tired) for anything else afterwards. A lot of places in Kyoto have last entry at 4pm (or even 3:30pm) and it takes forever to get anywhere because the buses are so slow.

The Kyoto Animation building is a yellow building on the west side of Kohata Station (JR Nara line) (oh I guess my earlier statement was wrong, it’s on the way to Nara). I actually caught the Keihan train to similarly named Kowata Staion, because there are no JR stations on the east side of Kyoto where I was staying. The KyoAni Shop is in a brown brick building on the west of Kowata station. It’s important not to confuse the two. The office building is a private office and you’re not allowed inside. You can try to talk to the staff if you feel brave enough.

The KyoAni Shop is a small shop, but it’s surprising how much small Japanese shops can hold. Sometimes in anime shops around Japan there is a small “KyoAni Shop” section with a limited selection of KyoAni goods, so what’s sold in the “official” shop isn’t exclusively sold there, however the small sections elsewhere are hard to find and might not have what you want. I’m not sure if there are other “official” shops like this one. The shop was on the second floor, although I’m not sure why the sign outside the building has Kyoto Animation taking up the whole third floor. Maybe I’m missing something. For reference, it is open from 10am to 6pm every day, and until 4pm sometimes (the writing is too small on my photo). It’s best to check their website though. When you’re organising things, you don’t think of these details and you might end up going and it’s closed, or if you want to find out, there’s nowhere that you can find out. I went on a Sunday which could have been bad considering opening hours, but it was the only real chance I had considering my schedule. Also, opening at 10am was a bit late because I had to rush off to Toyosato afterwards so it would be past midday before I reached Toyosato (I actually missed the train which comes once an hour so I arrived at 1pm). It was okay in the end because there’s not much to do at Toyosato (more on Toyosato in another post).

Nara

There’s always something under renovation. The renovations often take years, for example the famous Himeji Castle has been under renovation since 2010, and they’re planning to finish this year. A regular business wouldn’t be able to stop business for four years.

Washinomiya

I recommend going here when there’s a festival. Festival dates are listed on their website. It’s hard to schedule your holiday to coincide with specific dates though, so you might not have a choice. I think the New Year festival is the biggest. It’s been many years since Lucky Star aired, so I’m not sure how crowded it will be but from news websites there have still been a considerable amount of Lucky Star fans. This article says 470,000 people visited the shrine for New Year 2014. I went on the 4th April 2013 and there were about 5 people in total.

K-On! in Kyoto

I didn’t want to make this a pilgrimage blog, but I guess it’s easier to do something that’s already been prepared (and photos are nice). Also, as mentioned previously, these old pilgrimages aren’t really pilgrimages so the quality cannot match the Kyoukai no Kanata one. Well, I’m not sure if future pilgrimages can match it either. Every time I think of it I feel so proud ^_^; I went to Kyoto in early March 2013. Basically most of these shots came from just visiting the area. It was my first time in Kyoto so I took a lot more photos than I would because anything different is interesting.

The ones near the bridge were from a big Google maps map with a list of anime locations. Only a few had photos so I had to work off that. Only after the trip when I found the screenshots did I realise what the shots were meant to represent. Being the first time looking for places corresponding to specific screenshots, I thought they were meant to be iconic places or something. Well, they are iconic now that I’ve done them and remember them. People say they like pilgrimages because they feel like they are in the world of the anime. I don’t actually feel that way because the buildings and scenery look so normal in real life. For me, it’s more the opposite: the real life location is nothing special, but when I watch the anime I can identify with the locations and the anime becomes more real. Well, I suppose if I stop and imagine the anime I will be able to recreate the feel of being in the world of the anime, but to get the right atmosphere I would have to watch the anime right there and then.

You’ll notice there is a net on top of Kyoto Tower. I thought it was due to renovation (there is always something under renovation) but I also have a theory that it might be to keep snow from accumulating on it. It was removed a few days later when I returned.

The dog one is a bit of a stretch… but I guess it highlights that when you walk around the neighbourhoods you do see these signs and that people own dogs in Kyoto.

CLANNAD in Mizuho (瑞穂町) 聖地巡礼

I went here on 2013-11-26 at about 4pm (always in a rush before sunset!). I was in Tachikawa before that and had to make an executive decision whether to do Mizuho in a rush or sometime in the distant future. I think it was worth it. Also my camera (Panasonic Lumix LX-7) is awesome. The pictures it takes is better than the human eye for night vision. All those pictures of the pond were almost night time already. A disadvantage is that it doesn’t actually take what you see. I could tweak the settings, but I’m not an expert and also the default photos are almost always better anyway.

I screwed up with taking the path leading up the hill because I was trying to take the scene at the beginning of the anime and thought it was facing downhill but it’s actually more facing the side without a view of the path. Partly because of that, I didn’t take enough uphill photos which were the ones mainly used in the anime, but also I went a different way up and only walked downhill on that road. The road is a lot shorter than I thought, with only two curves. I didn’t try to figure out the exact places on the hill beforehand because I thought the path was too generic. However, being only two curves, you always know where it is by the direction of the curve, and most of the scenes use the same curve at lower part of the path because there aren’t as many features at the top.

The tunnel under bridge is my favourite photo. I stumbled upon it because I saw a pond and wanted to explore, not expecting there to be any scenes from the anime. From there a path leads to the top and that’s the reason why I didn’t head up the road.

For the mobile phone tower, it was really hard to find the screenshot for it (I knew it was there from one of the sites I used as a reference). I was looking through every episode and realised that Tomoyo doesn’t appear in most episodes but even then I couldn’t find it. I finally found it (with a bit of help from a reverse image search) in After Story episode 1 where they were trying to find members for their baseball team.

Even though I took my pictures at sunset, I could never get that yellowness that KyoAni does. It could be the season, or it could be the clouds, or an animation effect, or maybe I just missed it. For the fountain, it alternates between small and big around every 5 minutes, but I couldn’t figure out which one they used in the anime.

In the first pair of pictures, it is actually the wrong bridge. There is another one about 100m down the river. I managed to take a wrong turn walking from the station and missed some of the buildings on that road too.

Not many pictures, but I only had an hour and I covered the main parts that I wanted to (the hill and the pond). I really needed more preparation to find the other places, and more time to walk to the other places (it would take several kilometres of wandering).

Kyoukai no Kanata Pilgrimage (境界の彼方 聖地巡礼)

I’m really not good at blogging. The most fundamental thing is to at least make some posts. So I’m just getting this out there to contribute to the community. There are many things that I wanted to do but would take a fair amount of time like side-by-side comparisons and information about locations but I guess this will have to do.

I actually went on this pilgrimage last week (17th December 2013) but only managed to upload it today (barely). I have to do it while it’s still current (episode 12 aired on the 18th) just because it’s that much more awesome. What’s really awesome is @seki_saima‘s page which is updated mere days after the episode airs and which I used as my main resource. Many thanks to @mjvito and his blog “like a fish in water” which was helpful in aggregating the community’s findings and led me to the other site.

I wanted to go on the pilgrimage a few weeks earlier (because of my schedule) but it’s a good thing I waited put it off for so long because I was able to include scenes from episodes 10 and 11, where a few important scenes were introduced, which resulted in a fairly complete pilgrimage. The autumn leaves were gone by then (so quick! I thought they would still be there) but the extra scenes were well worth waiting for.

This was my first real pilgrimage, although I have been to other locations from anime but… I guess it’s a grey area. It’s also probably my last because I won’t be around there anymore, but I might surprise myself since I enjoyed this one so much. I’m still not sure what’s so enjoyable about pilgrimages. I think it’s the end result, having photos that are the same as the anime, and being able to say “I’ve been there”. I’ll also try to upload photos from my previous “semi-pilgrimages“. I think one of the reasons I don’t consider them real pilgrimages is that I went to places where I was sure there was something else to do there. I was always insecure about whether I would travel all the way somewhere only to see a few boring houses and farms, spend a short while there and go all the way back. This pilgrimage had a high density of distinctive locations and I was short on time anyway so I had nothing to worry about.

I want to write about my preparation as well, but that would take pages and i would go off on related tangents and never finish. Let’s say it took many hours, and Google Maps and Street View were valuable tools. I was putting it off because I always felt I was underprepared and that when I arrived I would just be wandering around randomly not finding anything. I put it off for so long that it was actually detrimental and I had to do all of it with about 4 hours of daylight left. It’s a good thing Kyoukai no Kanata is full of night scenes, but daytime photos are better for detail and thanks to my thorough preparation, I got most of it done before nightfall.

If you’re new to this and not sure if you’d like it, the only advice I can give is to be prepared. Don’t rely on wandering around expecting to find locations. I “wandered” for hours on Google Street View instead. Imagine how much walking that would be equivalent to. Street View doesn’t have everything so some wandering might be necessary (e.g. inside parks). Have backup plans for places to visit nearby if you can’t find anything or finish early or just want to make the most of your time while you’re there.

Excuse me for how inexact my shots are compared to the anime. As mentioned, I was pressed for time, but even if I wasn’t, I didn’t want to hang around looking suspicious and bothering residents. Beyond just being a nuisance, in the school area you could get arrested. It makes me realise the sacrifices, determination and risk people go through in their pilgrimages. Most of the shots were from memory (I did so much preparation that I naturally memorised them), a few were random photos that managed to match, and some were from looking at the website on my mobile phone. Using a mobile phone is not recommended because the screen is so tiny and I took some shots that I thought looked right but were completely different (also the size of the images on the website is low to begin with). I’m not sure what  the best way is though. Memorising only gives you the approximate shot, and you tend to forget things so it is not reliable. Carrying a phone or tablet is hard to juggle along with a camera and takes time to keep switching, but I suppose it can be done.

One last thing. I was wandering around every dodgy alley (at night) for a while looking for Tsubai Market and never found it, so that is one major location I missed. I found it later on Street View.

Without further ado, here is my masterpiece, of which I am very proud.