Today’s Wall Street Journal has a front page article about Japanese anime tourists visiting the Washinomiya Shrine in Washimiya, Saitama Prefecture, because of its association with Lucky Star (らき★すた) by Yoshimizu Kagami (美水　かがみ). This caught my attention because Saitama is Ohio’s sister state in Japan!

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121737740486095275.html?mod=weekend_leisure_arts_hs_coll_left

According to the English Wikipedia entry, the Washimiya fan tourism phenomenon was reported already a year ago in the English newspaper, Asahi Shimbun/ International Herald Tribune (18 August 2007), although that article is no longer on the web site.

The manga started coming out in 2005 and volume 6 will be out in September — if the Japanese Wikipedia is correct — the information there is more up-to-date than books.or.jp, which is my usual source. The Kadokawa web site does not yet list it.

I’m planning to order this for the manga collection soon.