Washinomiya Shrine (鷲宮神社) is the oldest shrine in the Kantou region of Japan. It also happens to be one of the setting locations for Kyoto Animation’s Lucky Star, the very shrine that Kagami and Tsukasa work part-time as shrine maidens. I paid a visit today and took some interesting pictures.

How to get there

The shrine is located about 10 minutes away from Washinomiya Station (鷲宮駅) on the Toubu Isesaki Line (東武伊勢崎線). You can take the train directly from the Tokyo Metro subway station in Asakusa. The town is in the Saitama Prefecture and it is rather rural compared to the tourist-filled parts of Tokyo.

Alternatively you can also take the Hibiya Line from Akihabara and transfer to the Toubu Isesaki Line at Kita-Senju. In either case, the train goes to Kuki (久喜) and from there you have to transfer to a local line and take one stop to Washinomiya.

The world’s best map

Basically you walk straight from the station until you cross a river and hit a traffic light junction, which also happens to be the only set of traffic lights I saw in the area. Then, you turn left and the shrine beckons.

What is there

The first thing I saw when I reached the shrine was a Tsuruya itasha parked in the lot. Awesome.

The second thing I saw was a live-size voodoo doll of what I presume to be Konata. Looks like the local folks are fully exploiting this unplanned desecration of their local traditions. Good for them.

Inside the shrine

Most of the shrine is rather standard fare. There are places to wash your hands, hang ema, draw omikuji and pray. If you’ve seen one Shinto shrine in Japan, you’ve seen them all. Except maybe for the ones in Kyoto, which are pretty cool and occasionally unique.

There are some peacocks there for some reason

Here lieth a dragon god

Behold! The dragon’s lair!

The crux

The most important thing to check out while you are at Washinomiya is of course the ema (絵馬) wood blocks. Simply exquisite. Or horrifying, depending on how you view the whole phenomenon.

This guy is the king

For all the angry G00 fans out there

A proposal for Aya Hirano

This guy is very greedy

International marriage

I don’t understand what this guy wants

Moé diplomacy

It’s still the same guy. He visited 57 times

Yeah it’s him

He draws pretty well

I suppose it’s all rather harmless fun, and the town is apparently making quite a lot of money from the unexpected attention. Still, I wonder how the hardcore shrine goers feel about this moé invasion.

Well. The train ride to Saitama from urban Tokyo was long and expensive (be prepared to shell out close to 1,000 yen per trip depending on which part of Tokyo you start from), but all in all it was quite an interesting experience.

If you plan to make the pilgrimage, you can consider checking out the official website for any upcoming events.

My previous visits to real-life anime locations include the train stations for School Days and Lucky Star.

It’s the fourth day of our little adventure in Tokyo and we took a trip to neighbouring Saitama prefecture to visit Konata’s favourite Gamers and Animate branches. Long story short: Saitama isn’t a very exciting place.

JR Ueno Station

The location is JR Oomiya Station West Exit (大宮駅西口), about five (long) stops away from JR Ueno via the Utsunomiya Line (宇都宮線) or the Takasaki Line (高崎線). The journey takes around 30 minutes and cost 450 yen on an express train. You can also pay 1280 yen for a one-stop ride on the Shinkansen.

JR Oomiya Station

Immediately outside the exit, face left and you will find this:

Head towards the McDonalds and into the streets behind it to find the old location of Animate’s Oomiya Branch.

The branch has since moved to a bigger location about 10 metres away.

In fact, it even has a second storefront just next door selling character goods. (There’s also a Melon Books above it.)

And a few hundred metres away from Animate lies Gamers. It’s kind of hard to describe its location. In fact, I had to ask a guy in Sofmap for it. Then I asked for the directions to Animate from a Gamers employee. It seems that they do hire real otaku in such places.

The East Exit of the station also happens to be one of the setting locations for School Days, specifically Sakakino-chou (榊野町).

Well that’s about it. We didn’t wander too far from the station because it was already getting dark (at 4pm). We split up and I ended up wandering around some familiar places in Ikebukuro to take pictures and busk in nostalgia.

And by popular demand, here’s a soapland:

And here’s Odex:

Most of the other pictures suck, so I’m not going to bother posting them here. Go look at today’s gallery for more.

By the way, today’s doujinshi haul is as follows:

• Yousei Mangasha – Kaiketsu Ma-ryan (okay)
• Arestica – Sweet Folk Music
• Essentia – Giga Drill Break
• CRIMsON – CRIMsON plus (awesome)
• Rei’s Room & Spread-Pink – Double Again (decent)
• Amekazesyokudou – Clannad (nice cover)
• Arestica – Baby talk (nice)
• Matsumoto Drill Ladoratory – Tamakin (interesting…)

One more day till Comiket.

Their latest work is Kira Star　（きら☆ããŸ), an oh-so-clever word play on Lucky Star (らき☆ããŸ). The fun thing about TMA releases is that they like to reenact scenes from the original, often inducing a great deal of unintended hilarity.

Now obviously no self-respecting (lol, I kid) AV actress would star in such a production, so don’t expect too much. (Or rather, don’t expect anything at all. Please.)

Obliterating your source of moé in 3…2…1…

It begins.

FUNGA~~!

The new Super Sentai

Kagamin?

Tsukasa?

Who? ＿|￣|O

Lucky Kira Star!

Awesome blue screen effects

Why can’t they just, you know, find a real shrine to film on-location?

It’s the 1990s all over again

The reflections are all wrong.

3-nen B-gumi? Kuroi-sensei!

Who killed Akira-sama and replaced her with this?

This shot takes on a whole new meaning…

BTW chocolate coronets suck

This is what playing too much MMORPG does to you!

“How did I end up in this sad mess?”

Discussion over the consumption of vaguely phallic object

A seashell. Supposedly.

…

At this point, we are just 7 minutes into the video. I am bored. This sad excuse for a parody makes me want to claw my eyes out and stuff them into my ears.

I glance at the timer on Media Player Classic and suddenly it hits me…

WTF!?

Three hours!? This is madness! (And not Sparta.) I promptly decide to finish up with the remaining screenshots by skipping through the video so that I may be spared from having to actually sit through the uninspired monotonous droning that will forever haunt my enjoyment of Lucky Star.

Shiraishi looks 100% like his animated self

There are no train stations near TMA’s studio either

I’m pretty sure TMA made a Marimite AV once…

Lady, you have a piece of paper stuck to your face

“Thiiiiiiiis big”

I’m hungry

What’s in the bag? Hint: It ain’t candies!

*shudders* kowai yo! T_T

Wait I forgot. Is this supposed to be Konata?

This does not work on so many levels

I wonder if the mole is real

This is now about 1 hour into the video. The “parody” segment ends here. I leave it to you to imagine what the remaining 2 hours are about. There’s also some behind-the-scenes footage right at the end.

Oh hey, it’s Kyon-kun!

Final verdict: Suzumiya Hahiru was about twenty times more entertaining and only half as wince-inducing. A much better deal I’d say. If you’re still interested in checking out Kira Star for yourself (and risk permanent psychological trauma), a 1.8 GB torrent is available. You have been warned.

I haven’t received my Haruhi Vol.4 DVD yet, so I don’t know if there’s anything else in there. But long story short, Lucky Star is licensed. Video embedded after the break.

Actually, I wonder how well Lucky Star will fare… It’s definitely not Haruhi’s kind of awe-inspiring existential sci-fi high school moé adventure, and the otaku jokes get quite hardcore on some occasions. How many anime fans in America have actually heard of Animate‘s tenchou?

And slightly off-topic, I really hate what Bandai did to the limited edition R1 releases for Haruhi. The DVDs come with way too much useless crap and the thin cardboard box feels cheap. I would gladly do without the Haruhi hair ribbon and other miscellaneous trinkets in exchange for cooler-looking and more durable DVD packagings. I still bought them anyway but that’s only because I’m an idiot. Oh well.

Head to the gallery for more cosplay pictures from the event (including the SOS-dan group). Also, a whole bunch of Danny Choos and a red balloon! Weee.

Remember how Konata was being so proud of the fact that her fanart submission was published in Newtype? Well I browsed through the latest issue in Kinokuniya today and indeed it was there! I took a picture of it secretly with my compact digital camera when no one was looking. Just like downloading fansubs and jaywalking, it’s okay as long as you don’t get caught.

By the way it’s the drawing on the right depicting Akira. Apparently Konata is an Akira fan. So cool. The accompanying text basically says that this submission is a message of support of Akira-sama and also, as a side note, includes a small plead for Shirashi-kun to be given better treatment.

Kyo-ani are cool people.