Guess how some manga fans celebrated the New Year? By hopping over to the Washinomiya Shrine depicted in the popular Lucky Star manga/anime series. The shrine was the backdrop for the slice of life series and devoted fans would of course think of it rather fondly. Check out the opening theme where you can also catch a glimpse of the shrine.

Looking for numbers? According to various reports, around 450,000 (a lot of whom where otaku) dropped by the shrine this year. Apparently the number of visitors have steadily increased with the popularity of the show itself. In 2007, the year that the show was first aired, the number of visitors were closer to 90,000 and 3 years later it has increased by 150,000.

Of course the local authorities must be pleased with this large influx of visitors. In fact, I also read that the bigwigs asked if a lot of shops in the area could stay open for business in that time period. Seems like a lot of them also sell products that are directly linked to the show. Well, there is nothing wrong with spicing up the local economy with just the right marketing, I suppose.

What I did find amusing was the town's reaction to the visitors. As you can imagine, most of them didn't know what to make of this trend. You can't really blame them, can you? A lot of cosplayers popped up all over the place, most of whom displayed a passionate devotion to the show (check out the Konata is my wife reference on Wiki). Good news is, no one was against the otaku coming by and everyone seems to be alright with them so far.