My Trip to Matsumoto Casatle and Lake Kizaki

This is Matsumoto Casatle, the castle we went to see today. One of the oldest and most beautiful castles in this part of Japan, because a) there was never as much culture over in Eastern Japan as in the Western and Southern areas and b) many castles were dismantled for scrap during the Meiji Period :( By the way, these pictures are being posted via a new script I wrote which will hopefully make it easier to post pics in the future. And the pictures link to the original sizes on Flickr, so if you see anything you want to grab, click through and do so.

Another view, with myself and my son in it. Zoom zoom.

Lots of cool stuff to see inside. A local collector of old, old guns from Japan's past donated his collection to the city, so there were many amazing guns to see that were hundreds of years old.

Another view of the castle, this time from the other side. One reason I picked today to go was, the weather was never, ever going to be as nice as this in August. It wasn't even really hot.

We then went over to Lake Kizaki, which is about 35 km from Matsumoto. It's famous for being where Please Teacher and Please Twins were "filmed." This is the Lawson where Miina washes her feet in episode 1.

Virtually everything that shows in the two anime series is based on an actual shot, making it fun to go see your favorite places.

If you're not familar with the place, watch the series opening credits here.

Had to visit the Hekikawa Daily Store, which is really a Yamazaki Daily Story run by some nice older ladies. The place is naturally filled with otaku, eating noodles and buying souvinirs. I was dropping off something a J-List customer wanted me to deliver to the owners.

Here they are. They of course get customers all the time who like the two anime series, and have had people from Europe drop by, even. By the way, they have an official blog up in Japanese, if you want to leave comments to say hello they'd get a kick out of it I'm sure.

This is the train crossing from the opening credits. Note the four other cars filled with otaku pretending not to be there to geek out like I was doing.

Next stop, Uminokuchi Station, where several scenes from the series (including the climax of Twins) take place.

Inside is pretty cool. I could imagine sitting here for hours, soaking it all up. It's funny to have anime become so real. For example, on Friday Taiga's swimsuit from episode 7 of Toradora appeared on my desk, which doesn't happen everyday.

The view of the lonely train line is pretty awesome. That alone would make this a nice station to explore.

Note the unidentified otaku doing what I was doing.

The name of the station is quite boldly shown in the series.

We drove around and hit some other sights around the lake, like the campground from the bonus episode of Twins (ufufu), and the dock.

Finally, of course, was The House. As in, the house that Twins is set in, which is occupied by some presumably non-otaku family, who wonder what the hell is up with people taking pictures of their home at all hours of the day. Anyone got enough courage to ring the doorbell and see if they'll tell us what it's like? I kind of wish the house were empty, I'd gladly pay a fee to go inside.