Girls Band Cry
Yesterday I didn't get up to much, but I went to see the new Atre collaboration with Girls Band Cry - one of my favorite recent anime. Actually GBC is so popular here, it's gotten an incredible amount of merch and collaborations in only like a year. Not that I'm complaining though!
Actually, the sign had a mistake on it, which is covered in my photo but I saw on Twitter that they replaced the panel today! The Twitter user below documented the replacement lol
There was a decent amount of character art around, especially since I think GBC is actually concurrently having other collabs as well? I know there was a coffee shop one in Yodobashi Camera recently anyway.
My favorite were these goobers recreating the scene from the anime where Subaru and Nina (best girl obvs) carry Momoka home after she'd gotten drunk!
For once something I'd actually want an acrylic standee of
Actually this scene also inspired an (official!!) game where you play various stages carrying Momoka home that released at the end of last month: Momoka (wo) Wasshoi
Tokorozawa Sakura Town
I feel like I haven't done enough this trip to get out of Tokyo or go see less popular areas, so I wanted to make sure to do something like that on my last full day. I was thinking about Chiba, Saitama, or like Kawasaki or something, but I saw a cool photo of Tokorozawa Sakura Town so I decided to go check it out today. It was only a little over an hour away by train and I got to ride a line I'd never ridden before too!
The Tokorozawa area itself (at least around Sakura Town) seems to really be leaning into anime and anime-style art (is there a term for this?) so when I arrived at Higashi-Tokorozawa Station I was greeted by this mural.
Also, the station itself looked pretty cool. After gaining my bearings, I headed towards Tokorozawa Sakura Town but not along the main street, which I found out was a bit of a mistake a little later! The walk was a pleasant 10-ish minutes and it was immediately obvious once I arrived. While the surrounding area seemed to be mostly low-rise businesses (a far cry from the central wards of Tokyo) and normal houses, Sakura Town is comprised of multiple large, artsy buildings.
The building on the right (the same at the one in the back center) houses some exhibition halls, a few stores, and a Family Mart. You can check out the pamphlet for Tokorozawa Sakura Town here, but to me it seemed like the majority of that building didn't have anything going on, at least today. Actually, overall I was a bit surprised by how empty the place was... is it a hidden secret? It is a bit in middle of nowhere I guess?
The building on the left is the Kadokawa Musashino Museum, a culture center that houses a few cafes, some museum-type places, a manga and light novel library, a special exhibition gallery, etc. The building actually felt way bigger on the inside than it looked outside (although it's not like it looked small in the first place). I think it's also called the Kadokawa Culture Center but unsure if they are the exact same thing or if there is a distinction or something.
The Kadokawa Musashino Museum
After exploring the outdoor areas of the site, I made my way into the culture center and bought a ticket to be able to see all of the exhibitions for ¥3,700 (expensive??). This ticket was called the 1-day passport and allows for re-entry etc. to all the exhibits all day. I didn't realize (but I guess I would have visited anyway), but 2 of the 5 floors were actually closed today. The 5th floor Musashino Gallery appeared to be changing exhibitions for the upcoming exhibit on the founder of Kadokawa Shoten, Genyoshi Kadokawa. The 3rd floor was also closed, which was super unfortunate because it was one of the onees that sounded most interesting to me, the EJ Anime Museum!! I don't know if it doesn't have a regular exhibit or is just switching right now or something but the Twitter Account for the Museum seems to indicate the next exhbition is in late December. (｡•́︿•̀｡)
Anyway, the other stuff sounded interesting anyway, so I wasn't too upset. I first headed down to the first floor to check out the Immersive Digital Art Theater: Ukiyo-e RE:BORN exhibit. The exhibit was really cool, so definitely check out the link because it will likely explain better than me but I will try lol
The exhibit first starts with a brief explaination of how the art of ukiyo-e woodblock printing started and talked about various influences, etc. It actually also made me realize that the Hatsune Miku Beauty Looking Back figure I was gushing about the other day is actually a reference to a painting of the same name by Hishikawa Moronobu!!
After that section, you go into a big wider open area with multiple benches and bean bags, etc. I actually hadn't realized at this point that there was a "sit-down and watch" portion of the exhibition, so I was briefly stunlocked but then was able to get a beanbag seat right as the show was starting. Since I arrived right at the top of the hour, the presentation had a voiceover in Japanese. If you go and want an English voiceover, I think it's possible to go to the :30 minute showings which are music-only and then listen to the English audio on your phone. I'm not one to wait 30 minutes for something like that though!
The story was broken up into various chapters that seemed to describe the various types of ukiyo-e art. The music was really good and I thought the projection mapping was also done super well, like it seemed like the projection didn't bleed onto anything it wasn't supposed to. Overalll the whole atmosphere and vibe was very cool.
I was able to recognize a pretty good number of the artists but there were a lot (especially in the depictions of warriors) that I hadn't seen before. There were also some pieces that literally everyone would recognize
The only thing that kind of took me out of it was that the art had been turned into video by like animating the different layers (and obviously widening the scene etc) and it seemed like it was probably done by hand (lovingly, by an artist!!) but in some cases things like billowing of clouds etc. seemed like they were done with AI so there was weird warping and stuff but I actually just thing it's some regular distortion effect or something. Regardless of how that particular effect was made I didn't think it looked particularly good though lol
I think overall though the video was very good and cool, I'd probably recommend to anyone. I also felt like it was worth it since the video was probably like 20 minutes long. The bean-bag chair was pretty comfortable as well!
After that there was a cool exhibit showing off Utagawa Hiroshige's The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, which had each print along with a map showing where on the route between Edo (now Tokyo) and Kyoto each print was located.
The rest of the exhibit talked about the various types of ukiyo-e and had a (replica I think) printing block set for The City Flourishing, Tanabata Festival (also by Hiroshige) which was pretty cool.
After viewing the special exhition, I headed to the manga library, also on the first floor. I obviously wouldn't be able to really take advantage of it but wanted to check it out. The library was a little small but definitely cozy and quiet enough to read if you were so inclined. Luckily for me, there was also interesting things to see other than the books, like a life-size Rem!
I think I saw someone online say Rem with a nose is cursed but I think it's just because of how pointy it is? Lol Like she has a nose in this figure and it doesn't seem as weird haha
There was also various singatures from famous people (mostly associated with Kadokawa) that had visited. For example, here is one from from Kouhaku Kuroboshi who is a famous illustrator and character designer! For me personally, I'm a big fan of his design for Hokusai from FGO (I actually took so many re-run banners to get her) and Ina from Hololive!!!
Next, I headed to the 4th floor to see a couple more exhibits. I stumbled upon the 2 story "Bookshelf Theatre". It actually just looked like a regular library to me, except slightly inconvenient to get to some of the books.
I was thinking that maybe sometimes groups would come and perform here or something to legitimize the "theatre" name but shortly after arriving, a show started. Do I have impeccable timing today or what?? This facility also seems to really like projection mapping. You can check out this offical video to get a better look at the space.
One cool aspect was that although the narration was in Japanese, they actually made use of the screens to show English subtitles. Nifty! Apparently shows start every 20 minutes and seem to last like 5 or 6 (my best guess). The theme was around rebuilding after the wars in the 20th century and housing books to make sure that it didn't happen again (or something like that, it was hard to focus on the subs with the show lol)
The 4th floor also had a cool microcomputer exhibit going on! I thought the exhibit was actually pretty funny. In the greeting to the exhibit, it said the following
In any kind of business that, is related to intelligence, there are always a certain number of freaks that are interested and curious about all kinds of things.
The sudden use of "freaks" in the otherwise serious passage really got me. See the full greeting below if interested.
The exhibit was both informative and neat.
It was around this time that I realized that both the 3rd and 5th floor were out of commission for the time being. Rather than despairing, I took it as a sign that I should move on to other attractions and keep on keeping on.
Tokorozawa Sakura Town also has a pretty modern looking shrine at its facility. I somehow didn't directly take any photos of it, but you can take a look here. Definitely a beautiful building! The large torii nearby also glows different colors at night, maybe I should have came later in the day?? Either way, I did manage get a goshuin here and actually, it was the last one I needed to finish filling out the front half of my goshuincho!
The Shinto priest that did the seal seemed a little surprised that I was visiting and asked how I even heard of the place. We chatted for a bit and he also seemed surprised that I would visit on the last day of a month-long trip. Maybe the town isn't super popular with foreign tourists? I actually don't think I really saw any while I was visiting the entire day, although I did see a couple Japanese tour groups touring the museum. Even among vistors to the shrine, I didn't really see too many people going in for goshuin.
That being said, I do wonder if more people are going in when they have special events going on? I had read somewhere that there had been a Spice & Wolf collab at the shrine and I definitely would have gotten goods if that was the case still. I did find one tweet documenting this, but I can't embed it because Twitter says it is adult content for some reason, so I'm including a screenshot here
Originally from @Crow_Gorira on Twitter
Unfortunately, that event was in 2023 and the more recent events didn't seem appealing to me personally (although none was going on today anyway). Too bad I didn't even know about goshuin or Tokorozawa Sakura Town in 2023!!
I decided to head back to the station so head towards the main Saitama City area. But on the way, I would be looking at the special LED anime manhole covers! First, I made my way through the park adjacent to Tokorozawa Sakura Town, which was pleasant and felt far removed from something like the technology-filled museum. Once I had made it through the park to what I assume is one of the main streets of the town, I managed to begin seeing the first of the 28 anime manhole covers in the city! Unfortunately, it was still light out as I was visiting, so I didn't get to see them illuminated, but still cool to see. Unfortunately, this is where my pathing mistake from earlier comes in. Since I had no walked along the main street on the way to Tokorozawa Sakura Town, I ended up walking to the station on one side of the steet and the walking back along the other side and the walking back to the station again in order to see all of the covers. Here are some of my favorites!
Once I had completed that pilgrimage, I hopped back on the Mushashino Line back towards Minami-Urawa Station. I had thought I would go to the The Railway Museum in Saitama, but it turned out it would be another 30 minutes away after getting to Minami-Urawa, and by then it would be 4:30. Since the museum closes at 5, I opted instead to just hop of the train and explore around my transfer station.
Luckily the Musashino Line was empty going in this direction!
I walked around the area for a bit and stumbled upon the Oyabahikawa Shrine. The shrine itself seemed nice but I found it kind of funny that the perimeter had a ton of small animal statues greeting passersby. Right near the entrance stairs, there were frogs!
After wandering around for a bit longer, I decided to head for dinner and head home a bit early to make sure I was packed. Of course, I headed to Sushiro for one last hurrah.
See you tomorrow for my final day in Japan for 2025!