Anime Pilgrimage: Tamako Market and Eccentric Family

I was introduced to the idea of anime pilgrimages earlier this year, and was impressed enough by the idea to want to try it myself during our visit.  Basically it's visiting the physical location of a place shown in an anime.  Sometimes the anime will have a fictional place name or buildings, but still maintain enough landmarks to pinpoint the show's location inspiration.  Other times, the anime will draw the locations as is.  True otaku can even take real life pictures in the exact same angle and frame as the animated drawing.

I'm not an expert otaku enough to take side by side shots, but I thought it would be cool to at least visit some of the places that inspired the anime we like so much.

We took a bus over to the Masugata shopping arcade, near the Demachiyanagi (出町柳) train station, which is the inspiration for the setting in KyoAni's Tamako Market.  But to get there you pass by the Kamo River, which is part of the setting for Eccentric Family! Two birds tanuki with one stone, haha.

The Kamo river is famous for it's stone turtles, and is overall just a really nice place to hang out. There's bike paths on either side too, would have been nice to ride along I think!

Under a bridge, reminds me of the lovey lovey scenes in Chunnibyo!

Eccentric Family, an anime about a family of Tanuki shape-shifters, is set in this area of Kyoto.

Same bridge huhuhu.

Ah! Here's the entrance for Masugata Market.

Tamako Market, for the unfamiliar, is a slice-of-life anime about people that work and live in a shopping arcarde.  It's cute with light humor, and there's a mochi-addicted talking bird named Dera. Just because.  Right at the onset we stood in the long line to get some of the famous red bean mochi, which Tamako sells at her family's mochi shop.

From the anime~

Everything in Japan comes nicely packaged.

mame mochi!

The mochi was interesting.  Super fresh, which was delicious, with semi-hard beans mixed in.  The firm beans were a little salty, and paired well with the soft, sweet mochi. Yum!

We walked through the shopping arcade, which had the standard neighborhood staples featured in the anime - fish shop, meat shop, toy shop, flower shop, etc. No onsen though that I could see.

A little brighter, but still has all the flags on the top of the street.

A plush Dera!

Big fish hanging in the middle

Same fish, from Eccentric Family

There were some posters up from different anime that use the market as a setting!

And also random things non-anime related :)

lame mirrors?

Watch bagels?

At the end of the long alley were otaku "guest books".  I was not confident enough to leave a drawing though, haha!

So cute!

There were also cute character "children crossing" signs nearby.

Tamako and Dera

Choi

Although it was really cool to see the real-life location of Tamako Market and Eccentric Family, I was a little dissapointed we did not find a real life Mochizo! He's such a cutie! Haha!