More foreign tourists flock to anime sites across Japan

TOKYO – A growing number of foreign tourists are visiting locations in Japan that are featured in anime.

The generation that grew up watching anime is visiting real-life anime locations nationwide that have not received much attention before. The trend has excited local residents, with an expectation of regional development.

“Kakkoii (so cool),” 41-year-old Anqi Wang from Australia said as she gazed intently at a basketball club’s practice session at Noshiro High School of Science and Technology — formerly Noshiro Technical High School — in Noshiro, Akita prefecture.

The school is said to be the model for the fictional Sannoh Technical High School in the basketball anime Slam Dunk, whose basketball team is depicted as the strongest opponent of the protagonist’s team in the 2022 movie The First Slam Dunk.

The movie was a big hit overseas. Since the film’s release, an increasing number of foreigners have visited the school to watch the basketball team practise.

“At first, we wondered why they came to watch our regular practice, but now it has become a source of encouragement for us,” captain Haruto Sato said.

The nearby Noshiro Basketball Library and Museum, which displays Slam Dunk-related items, attracted 589 foreign tourists in fiscal year 2023, or 5½ times more than in fiscal 2019.

“Coming to the museum and watching practice at the high school has become a new sightseeing route,” a city official said. “It’s a good opportunity to have people from all over the world know of our city.”

Kasukabe in Saitama prefecture is the setting for the popular manga and anime series Crayon Shinchan. When the Ito-Yokado Kasukabe store – which was the model for the supermarket that the protagonist’s family frequents – was about to shutter in November 2024, foreigners visited to see it with their own eyes before