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!

Kyoto: Honno-ji

v Honno-ji

· 1582- The forced suicide of Nobunaga by his general Akechi Mitsuhide.  Nobunaga had just destroyed the Takeda family earlier that year, and Uesugi Kenshin had just died.  He sent Hideyoshi to attack the Mori, Niwa Nagahide to invade Shikoku, Takigawa Kazumasu to keep an eye on the Hojo, and Shibata Katsuie to invade Echigo/the rest of the Uesugi.  He asked Mitsuhide to go help Hideyoshi, while he went to rest at his temporary residence, Honno-ji.  Instead, Mitsuhide went to his castle in Sakamoto, gathered an army and surrounded Honno-ji.  Nobunaga committed suicide, and Ranmaru followed suit.  Mitsuhide burned the temple to the ground.  No one ever found Oda’s remains.  After Honno-ji, Mitsuhide attacked Nobutada, who committed suicide as well.

· Historians are mixed as to why Mitsuhide turned on Oda.  Theories include:

§ Loss of his post as official in charge of catering to Ieyasu’s party. And embarrassment for Nobunaga yelling at him about serving rotten fish

§ The threat of loss of his land because he was an older samurai (in his 50’s).  Nobunaga had already sent two other older retainers into exile for “poor performance”.

§ To convince a clan to surrender, he sent his mother as a hostage.  Nobunaga, however, had the clan heads executed, and in retaliation the clan killed Mitsuhide’s mom.

§ The culmination of being insulted, kicked, and forced to drink (he wasn’t a drinker) by Nobunaga.

· Honno-ji itself was founded in 1415, by the Nichiren Buddhist sect.  After Mitsuhide burned it down, Nobutaka Oda rebuilt the temple, and Hideyoshi later moved it in 1589 to its current location.  Honnoji was destroyed in a fire again in the 19^th century, and rebuilt in 1928.

Another temple that you won't find on the Kyoto tourist maps is Honno-ji.  Which is a little surprising considering that it was the great Oda Nobunaga's hang out spot, and he even died there.

The current Honno-ji is a re-build, and not in the original location of the first.  The current temple is actual smack dab in the middle of a shopping arcade, which is interesting.  Like Mibu-dera and it's bikes and cars, modern life has intermingled with the ancient.

You can kinda see the entrance of the temple on the left side.

I like this - old structure in the foreground with a modern construction backdrop.

Sak walked into a modern looking office to get his goshuin, while I sat outside the temple trying to picture what it was like on that fateful turning point of history - when Nobunaga's retainer Mitsuhide Akechi turned on him, forcing Nobunaga and others to commit seppuku while the temple burned down in flames.

Goshuin office.

In another modern building was a small "treasure house" - a tiny museum with a few artifacts from Nobunaga's era.

Nobunaga replica armor.

We paid the 500 yen to get in, even though very little was in English and no pictures were allowed.

Pictures of the english pamphlet.

I think it was well worth it though - because among the calligraphy scrolls and various laquerware were two swords.  One, a katana belonging to Ranmaru Mori, Nobunaga's page.  It was a very impressive, lengthy sword, just like the one he has in the samurai warriors/sengoku mousou videogames (haha, sorry, my otakuness is seeping out again).

The other was a small wakizashi.. belonging to Mr. Oda himself! It was kind of beat up looking - maybe it had been used? Who knows, but theres just something fascinating about connecting legendary historical figures to tangible objects.  One's inner-Indiana Jones I suppose.  It was enough for me to momentarily want to give up engineering and become a historian instead.

According to the pamphlet, this is Nobunaga's mausoleum, built at his son's request.

Anyway, after marveling at ancient weapons, Sak and I left Honnoji and wandered the shopping arcade in search of a snack.

Temple exit back out to the shopping district

I don't think there was a day in Japan where we didn't eat some sort of sushi/sashimi. Stereotypical, but hey, I love me some fish.

Kyoto: Nijo Castle

v Nijo-jo

· UNESCO world heritage site, flat land castle.  Commissioned by Tokugawa in 1601 and finished by Tokugawa Iemitsu in 1626.  Built to be the Kyoto residence of the Tokugawa shoguns.  Parts of Hideyoshi’s Fushimi castle (main tower and Karamon gate) were moved here.  The keep was destroyed by lightning in 1750 and never rebuilt.  In 1788 the inner castle was destroyed by fire, and later replaced with the prince’s residence in 1893.

· In 1867, part of the palace became imperial property when the Cabinet moved in.  Tokugawa’s mon was replaced with the imperial chrysanthemum mon.

· Castle equipped with “nightingale floors” which creak as alarms against assassins.  Other rooms have special doors where the shogun’s bodyguard could sneak out to protect him.

Nijo Castle is definitely one of the main tourist attractions on any visit to Kyoto, so it's kind of a wonder that we missed it the first time we went.  It doesn't really resemble the typical Japanese castle which has a 3-4 story main keep, but it was still pretty impressive even without a massive mountain or super steep stone walls.

Still has cool walls though

And awesome gates!

And mosquito moat!

You know it's a touristy spot when there'a an automated ticket machine out front!

The karamon gate "borrowed" from the previous head honcho, Hideyoshi, was very shiny!

So shiny I wonder how much of it is original?

There was no photography allowed inside the castle though, which consisted of many different rooms for the shogun to meet with various people.

Castle entrance

Unfortunately many of the original screen paintings had been removed for restoration when we visited.  The best part though were the nightingale floors! They made a very pleasant squeaking noise when you walked across them - as a safety measure against intruders.

Outside you can look underneath the floor boards, and see what's making the sound!  Small metal pieces that rub against the wood floor when it is stepped on, pretty cool!

Outside the castle is a lovely garden space, as well as a pond.

Though I can't say that Nijo-jo is my favorite castle, it is still really cool, and it's great that they left many things in their original style rather than turn it into a concrete shell of it's former self.