Numazu mayor says hundreds of anime fans have moved to the city
Fedir Kryshtovskyi06
November
2026
08:03
In the Japanese city of Numazu, anime tourism is helping attract not only visitors but also new residents. According to Mayor Shuichi Yorishige, after repeatedly visiting the city, hundreds of fans of the anime Love Live! Sunshine!! decided to move there. Channel NewsAsia reports.
Numazu in Shizuoka Prefecture has become a pilgrimage site for fans of the series, which first aired in 2016. The anime features real locations in the city and on Awashima Island: characters can be seen on buses, banners, manhole covers and ferry windows. The traditional Yasudaya Ryokan hotel, depicted in the series as the home of heroine Chika Takami, recorded an influx of young male guests after the anime began airing.
Fans became hotel employees
Twenty-seven-year-old Maki Nishiono moved from Osaka and began working at Awashima Hotel, which also became one of the series’ locations. She is among seven Love Live! Sunshine!! fans who moved to work at the hotel. Hotel representative Hiromi Miyashiro noted that it is difficult to find staff because of the hotel’s island location, but fan employees learned about it themselves and came there.
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Numazu’s population has declined from a peak of 210,000 to 180,000 people. According to the mayor, school graduates often leave for major cities to study and work. Among the new residents is Naoto Morochi, who moved from Kyoto and works in the city administration.
Anime locations in other regions
Seibu Railway, together with local authorities, promotes anime and manga locations along its network to support tourism in communities experiencing population decline and falling passenger traffic. In particular, fans of the anime Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day visit the city of Chichibu in Saitama Prefecture, where the Old Chichibu Bridge and Jorin-ji Temple shown in the series are located.
In Kumamoto Prefecture, characters from the One Piece manga became part of a recovery project after the 2016 earthquakes, which killed more than 200 people. The first statue of the main character, Monkey D. Luffy, was installed near the prefectural government building in 2018, and over the next four years, nine more statues of members of his crew appeared in different communities.
