Travel Blog No.1: Toyosato. The K-On! pilgrimage and a little bit more.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here and also my first time doing a sort of travel blog. I’ve been thinking about writing about our travels, however I’ve always had a hard time figuring out how to cut up a one or two week trip so it won’t end up too long. In this case it was easy to segment this part of the trip and focus on just one interesting little town.

Consider this the first installment of a travelling through Japan series (or maybe the only one I write, depending on my motivation). We’ll be taking a look at town of Toyosato, located in the Inukami District, Shiga Prefecture, Japan.

Before we get to Toyosato though, we need to talk about K-On!, because we would not have any interest in going to Toyosato in the first place if not for that. K-On! (けいおん!) is a Japanese Yonkoma (4-panel) Manga written and illustrated by Kakifly (a penname), first published in 2007 and later followed by an Anime adaptation by Kyoto Animation (KyoAni) that premiered in 2009, with a second season in 2010 and a Movie in late 2011. Thanks to my friend Mr. 2dkomplex [https://2dkomplex.wordpress.com] I first discovered K-On! a little more than a year ago, through the KyoAni adaptation and I’ve been a fan ever since. The story revolves around 5 high school girls and the Light Music Club (Keionbu in Japanese hence the title Keion or K-On!) It’s a fun lighthearted ‘slice of life’ series, but if you pay close attention to the little details, the story and the character development are deeper than what it seems, as is the case with a lot of KyoAni’s work. I’d highly recommend watching the series if you haven’t, even if you’re not one who usually watches Anime.

While the original Manga (and Anime for that matter) is not set in any specific place, the animated adaptation makes use of real life locations as references for the background locations, typical of a lot of the work KyoAni has done. Most of these locations for K-On! can be found around Kyoto Prefecture. The Sakuragaoka High School however, where most of the story takes place was modeled after the real life Toyosato Elementary School located in Toyosato-chō. I’m lucky that my wife is a fan too, so when we were planning a trip to Japan to revisit Kyoto, we figured we’d go see Toyosato as well. Toyosato is a fairly out of the way town. Despite whatever fame it might have because of its connection with K-On!, I would say that it’s pretty far removed from the typical tourist places in Japan. I guess you could call it rural and I don’t mean that as an insult, I’d happily live in a quiet place like this. In the K-On! series it looks like the school is set in some busy part of Kyoto, not too far from the shopping districts and restaurants. But in real life, most of that is in and around Kyoto, specifically Uji where KyoAni is based. The school pretty much stands by itself in Toyosato. If it’s you’re first time traveling through Japan, keep in mind that this is far away enough from the beaten path that you won’t find too many English signs (or people who can converse with you in English). Don’t let that scare you though, as long as you have internet, Google Maps and Google Translate with pretty much have you covered. Perhaps the best way to put Toyosato in context with other places you might visit in Japan is the fact this place is remote enough that the Toyosato train station has no staff in it. Literally it’s just an open building with a restroom next to the train tracks.

With the Kyoto Train Station as a starting point, there are a number of options to get to Toyosato, only differing in price due to Shinkansen (Bullet train) vs Express (or Local) trains vs a Train + bus ride combo, and how much walking you’ll do after that. They all take around one hour and forty minutes. Since it’s pretty out of the way, you also won’t find any direct route, you’ll have to make some transfers. The route we chose was the 2nd cheapest option costing a total of 1,420 Yen one way, per person but ending up with a shorter walk from the train station vs. the cheapest option that requires an additional bus ride and a longer walk from the bus station. From the Kyoto Station get on the JR Tokaido-Sanyo line bound for Maibara. Ride the train for 8 stops and get off at the Omi-Hachiman Station. You’ll exit the JR Omi-Hachiman Station and walk over to the Omi Railway Station. They are right next to each other, it takes about a minute to cross over. At the Omi-Hachiman Station get on the Omi Tetsudo-Yokaichi Line bound for Yokaichi. Ride 6 stops all the way to the end and get off at the Yokaichi Station. From Yokaichi Station transfer to the Omi Tetsudo line train bound for Maibara. Ride 4 stops and get off at the Toyosato Station.

Going back is pretty much just the opposite of getting there. The only things to keep in mind are the fact that only one train per hour stops at Toyosato for most of the day, two per hour during rush hours, so make sure to check the schedule at the station. If you screw up don’t worry, waiting in Japanese train stations is fun. As mentioned earlier there is no staff at the Toyosato station. No ticket machines or IC card readers either. When you get on the train going back to Yokaichi make sure you get on at the middle or back door, there will be a little dispenser on there that will give you a stub that proves you got on at Toyosato then you’ll just pay the fare to the station staff when you get to Yokaichi. From the Toyosato train station it’s 700 meters to the school. Keep in mind that if you’re navigating using Google Maps and you set your destination to ‘Toyosato Elementary School’ it will lead you to the current Elementary School. The school building we want to go to is on the same block opposite the current school. I know this because we ended up at the current school, you’ll just have to go around the block to the other entrance. Getting a little lost is not too bad though, you’ll get to see a bit of the town as you wander around. It’s around a 6 min. walk to the school from the station (if you don’t get lost) then you’re greeted by that familiar gate that you’re seeing for the first time. You get to channel your inner Hirasawa Yui on the first day of school.

The actual Toyosato Elementary School was built in 1937 through the donations of Tetsujirō Furukawa, his bust is the one in front of the school building and the one that was always decorated with a seasonal hat in the Anime. The school building was designed by American turned Naturalized Japanese Architect William Merrell Vories. In 2004 the Elementary school moved to a new building. Rather than have the old building torn down, residents of Toyosato moved to have the historic building preserved and in 2013 it was registered as a tangible cultural asset of the country (I assume this protects it under some law).

Even without the K-On! connection the building itself is interesting. From the yellow circles painted on the hall way to warn people about the doors that open outward, because in 1937 most people in Japan were used to sliding doors, to the brass rabbit and turtle sculptures on the stairs that seem to depict the hare and the tortoise fable. It’s a very well designed building that allows a lot natural light and ventilation to come in. William Vories was also a Christian Missionary which is why from some angles the school building kind of looks like a church. A couple of rooms in the ground floor house exhibits dedicated to the history of the school building itself. Also of some significance and warranting its own glass display case, an English made water pump called “the Conqueror pump” is on display at one end of the building, likely to do with the agricultural history of the area. It’s notable that the building underwent a full restoration in 2008, a full year before K-On! made it a point of interest.

Ever since K-On! put it on the map in 2009 the school has been visited by countless fans who over the years have contributed items to make the upstairs music room appear how it did in the show. Pretty much every detail has been recreated, from the snacks for tea time to the unfilled club registration form stuffed inside one of the desks. The adjacent building that appears as the auditorium in the show has been converted to a souvenir shop and museum for even more K-On! related items, from a complete set of instruments and a whole lot of figures and art work. As it stands as of 2017, the school is open to the public. You can walk into the building, wander through the hall ways and go all the way up into the music room. A number of rooms in the building seem to still be in use for school administrative functions and a few of the downstairs class rooms are used as pre-school classes.

We were there on a Wednesday, May 17, 2017 and had the place pretty much to ourselves to explore and take pictures before a few other fans showed up. I’ve read it’s busier on Weekends and there’s usually an event of some sort for each of the characters birthdays.

It’s a surreal experience to just wander around the school. After 41 episodes of anime and a Movie featuring the place, it definitely didn’t feel like it was the first time being there. The stairs, hallways and music room all seemed like familiar places. The accuracy in which the school was rendered in the series and the accuracy that the fans went through to duplicate the K-On! club room in real life is amazing. If we treat KyoAni’s works as art then it’s a perfect example of art imitating life and life imitating art.

More than just seeing the school and calling it an obligatory pilgrimage to a K-On! Shrine visiting Toyosato also leads to other interesting insights about Japan. At first glance there’s pretty much nothing else in Toyosato, specifically this part of Toyosato that we walked around in. Pretty much the only major things in the immediate area are the Elementary school and a fairly big hospital. There are a few factories and buildings around but it’s mostly residential and agricultural land. There’s a shrine next to the school and a several nice traditional Japanese houses. There didn’t even seem to be any major restaurant in the area aside from the bakery next to the train station. In short, not much “tourist stuff” to do, but for me that part of what makes it even more interesting.

If you only go to popular tourist places while travelling you won’t really get a feel of what that country is really like. The tourism industry tends to mask the not so nice parts and present guests with a more polished sort of ‘for show’ side things. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just the way things are. What I find amazing about this trip to Toyosato is that however out of the way it might be is that not much really changed from our perception of what Japan is like. The people are still super friendly, language barrier or not. The staff at Souvenir shop in the school went out of their way to print out a map to show us where the post office was (we wanted to mail a postcard we got at the school to Manila) when they could not explain it in words. The place is impeccably clean, from the streets, canals, down to the restrooms in the staff-less train station probably even more so because of the lack of tourists. The train that only comes once per hour still arrived perfectly on time.

This trip may have started as a ‘visit to the school in K-On!’, and while that may be a sort of bucket list item for me, I also ended up with a bit more an appreciation of what Japan is really like.