Anime and Manga in Japan: Ghibli, Gundam, Akihabara and Manga Cafés

A giant white robot lowers its head, its panels slide open and lights sweep across the waterfront in Odaiba while music swells and a crowd of phones rises to meet it. A few train rides away, a reader in a manga café turns pages from right to left with a cup of coffee going cold beside the elbow. Anime and manga in Japan are things you can walk into: museums, statues, whole neighborhoods and hometowns of creators, spread from Tokyo to Kumamoto.

Where can you enjoy anime and manga in Japan?

You can enjoy them in Tokyo first of all, but also in Aichi, Kanagawa, Fukuoka, Toyama, Tottori and Kumamoto, because the best-loved characters have homes, statues and galleries scattered across the country. Many fans plan whole trips around what is called an anime pilgrimage, visiting the real places that appear in a series or that gave a creator his start.

The idea is catching on. In April 2023 the Japan Business Federation proposed linking manga and anime with tourism so that foreign fans could more easily reach the places tied to particular stories. A survey among American travelers found that nearly a quarter named Japanese popular culture as a reason to come, so if this is why you are going, you are in good company.

Giant robots in Odaiba and Fukuoka

In Odaiba, Tokyo, a Gundam Unicorn stands on the waterfront, and four times a day it transforms with lights and music. The figure is 20 meters tall, which is a good deal more impressive in person than in photos, and the show turns the plaza into a small open-air theater. Even if you have never watched a single episode, the sight of the armor shifting is easy to follow.

Fukuoka has its own answer: a life-size statue of ν Gundam, nearly 25 meters tall and likely the largest Gundam statue in the world. Both sites have Gundam shops selling model kits from any part of the series, which makes them a place to bring home something you can build at a table afterward. Fans of the franchise often treat the two statues as a pair worth seeing.

Studio Ghibli in Mitaka and Aichi

The Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo, opened in October 2001 and holds exhibits based on Studio Ghibli films. It also shows animations, including short films not available elsewhere, so a visit gives you something no streaming service can.

Ghibli Park, a themed park that opened on November 1, 2022, sits in Nagakute, Aichi. It has a short film, A Night in the Valley of Witches, made by the studio and distributed exclusively for the park. For anyone who grew up on Ghibli, the two places complement each other, one a quiet museum devoted to craft, the other an outdoor park built around the films.

Hometowns, statues and landscapes

In Hokuei Town, Tottori, the Gosho Aoyama Manga Factory is an interactive experience in the hometown of the creator of Detective Conan. In Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture, the Fujiko F Fujio Hometown Art Gallery displays exclusive Doraemon works. In Kumamoto, a statue of Monkey D. Luffy from ONE PIECE stands at the prefectural government headquarters, a fun stop for photographs.

Hakone, known as a top hot spring resort, draws Evangelion fans because its landscapes inspired the anime’s illustrations. That makes it a place where a soak in an onsen and a pilgrimage can share one trip. The Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum, meanwhile, inspired some scenes in Spirited Away, so a walk among its old buildings may feel oddly familiar.

Which districts and museums matter?

Akihabara in Tokyo is the district that matters most for fans, since it is popular with anime and manga lovers and with the wider otaku subculture. Beyond it, a handful of museums give the art form its depth, from the Fujiko F Fujio Museum in Kawasaki to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka and the Kyoto International Manga Museum.

Akihabara

Akihabara is where the culture feels most like a daily habit rather than an exhibit. Shops stack shelves with manga volumes, figures and model kits, and the streets are full of people who know exactly what they came for. It suits first-timers and devoted collectors alike, because you can wander without a plan and still find something that catches the eye.

The district sits comfortably beside the other Tokyo sights, so travelers fold it into a wider day in the city. Come with an open mind and some room in your bag, since the browsing tends to turn into buying.

The Doraemon museum and gallery

The Fujiko F Fujio Museum is dedicated to Doraemon and stands in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. Visitors see characters, official sketches and original artwork, which shows how a beloved cartoon begins as pencil lines on paper. It is a good fit for anyone curious about the making of a character rather than just the finished episode.

A second chapter of the story sits far to the northwest of Tokyo in spirit, if not on the map: the Fujiko F Fujio Hometown Art Gallery in Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture, with exclusive Doraemon works. Pairing the two gives a fuller picture of the creator, from the museum to the town that shaped him.

Kyoto International Manga Museum

The Kyoto International Manga Museum maintains a website listing manga published in Japanese, a sign of how seriously the form is studied there. The city also has a link to the craft itself, since Kyoto Seika University has offered a highly competitive manga course since 2000. For readers who like the history of comics as much as the stories, this is the stop that gives context.

Kyoto is mostly known for temples and tea houses, so a manga museum adds a modern thread to a city trip. It is a chance to see that the same country that preserved wooden halls also produced a worldwide comic tradition.

What should you know before you go?

Know that this is a huge industry with plenty of its own habits, and a few of them help you enjoy it. Japan’s anime world includes over 430 production companies, among them Studio Ghibli, Kyoto Animation, Sunrise, Bones, Ufotable, MAPPA, Wit Studio, CoMix Wave Films, Madhouse, TMS Entertainment, Studio Pierrot, Production I.G, Nippon Animation and Toei Animation. Knowing a few of the names makes museum labels and shop displays more meaningful.

How manga is read

Manga are comics or graphic novels that originated in Japan, and traditionally the stories flow from top to bottom and from right to left. If you pick up a volume in a shop, you start at what a Western reader would call the back. It takes a few pages to adjust, and then it feels natural.

A manga kissa, or manga café, is a place where people drink coffee, read manga and sometimes stay overnight. It is a very Japanese way to spend an unhurried hour with a stack of volumes, and a good way to try a series before you commit to buying it.

Why the culture is so big

The scale helps explain the crowds at the sites. Comiket, the largest comic book convention in the world, gathers around 500,000 visitors over three days. An anime episode can cost between US$100,000 and US$300,000 to produce, a reminder of how much work lies behind each half hour.

Box office numbers tell the same story. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train became the fastest-grossing film in Japanese cinema history, earning 10 billion yen in 10 days. Spirited Away, the previous record holder, took 25 days to reach the same amount.

Fans around the world

If you have only met this world at home, you may be surprised how global it already is. Anime Expo in Los Angeles is one of the largest fan conventions in the Western world, the British Museum in London held a large manga exhibition in 2019, and Germany celebrates Manga Day every 27 August, a tradition since 2010. The Barcelona Manga Festival opened its 28th edition to more than 163,000 fans in 2022.

Going to Japan, then, is less a leap into the unknown than a visit to the source. You will find the same characters you know, in the places where they began.

Good to know before you go

Most of the stops in this world are in the cities and towns named above, so a trip can be built around a few of them without crossing the whole country. Spirited Away and Evangelion fans may want to add the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum and Hakone, while collectors will find the Gundam shops in Odaiba and Fukuoka handy for model kits. Check each site’s own details before you set out, and leave a little space in the suitcase for the souvenirs that will inevitably find you.

Sources

Japan National Tourism Organization, anime and manga (https://www.japan.travel/en/guide/japanese-anime-and-comics/), checked October 11, 2026
Wikipedia, Anime (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime), checked October 11, 2026
Wikipedia, Manga (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manga), checked October 11, 2026
Wikipedia, Studio Ghibli (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_Ghibli), checked October 11, 2026