About Otaku Japan
Last updated: May 2026
Our Mission
Otaku Japan helps international fans plan anime pilgrimage trips to real-world locations across Japan. We combine curated location data with AI-generated itineraries so visitors can spend less time researching and more time at the places that matter to them.
We Are Not a Travel Agency
Otaku Japan is an information service. We do not arrange, book, or sell travel on your behalf. Hotel and experience links route to third-party booking sites where you complete the transaction directly. Prices shown are indicative and may change without notice.
Where the Data Comes From
Every spot in our database traces back to at least one verifiable public source. We mix four ingestion tiers, then cross-check between them:
- Tier 1.1 — the official Anime Tourism 88 list (Japan's annual fan-voted destination ranking).
- Tier 1.2 — municipal tourism sites (city / town / prefecture official anime pages).
- Tier 1.3 — anime production committee press releases and official tie-up announcements.
- Tier 4 — Wikipedia / Wikidata structured location entries.
- Multi-source verification — spots confirmed by two or more independent sources are tagged "verified".
Current Data Scale
1,216 verified pilgrimage spots, 2,252 user-visible locations across all 47 prefectures, 1,000+ anime works indexed. Numbers update as we add and re-verify entries.
Data Quality Policy
We hold ourselves to a small set of rules so the database stays trustworthy as it grows:
- Every spot must record a source URL — no anonymous entries.
- AI is used to translate and summarize, never to invent locations or lore.
- Six-rule hallucination filter on AI output: cite-source, no-fabrication, no-personal-data, factual-tone, no-affiliate-promises, no-legal-claims.
- Spots flagged by users or rights holders are reviewed within 7 days.
Content Removal Requests
If you are an anime rights holder, location owner, or someone depicted in our content and want a spot removed or amended, please contact us. We respond to every request, even if we ultimately leave the entry in place with attribution corrected.