Ōarai, Ibaraki

Where it sits. Ōarai is a small coastal town of around fifteen thousand people in Higashiibaraki District, on the Pacific shore of Ibaraki just north of the mouth of the Naka River and about fifteen kilometres east of the prefectural capital, Mito. It occupies twenty-four square kilometres of low sandy coast broken by one rocky headland, and it faces due east into open ocean — which is the geographical fact that shapes everything about it, from the fishing fleet to the sunrise pilgrims to the ferry terminal to the fact that a third of the population is over sixty-five.

The shrine on the rock. Ōarai Isosaki Shrine occupies the headland, its main precinct up among pines on the bluff, its origin traditionally dated to 856. What people come for is a subsidiary structure: the Kamiiso no Torii, a stone gateway planted on a black reef below the cliff with the surf breaking through it. At high water the sea runs clean through the uprights; at low water the rock is exposed and mussel-covered. Facing east with nothing between it and North America, it frames the sunrise, and on clear mornings — above all over the New Year, when hatsuhinode viewing is a national custom — the shrine steps and the seawall fill well before dawn with tripods. The rest of the year it is quiet enough to have to yourself at seven in the morning, and the shrine's upper precinct, with its seventeenth-century hall and the pine-shaded approach, is worth the climb regardless of the light.

The rest of the seafront. Ōarai Sun Beach is one of the largest sand beaches on the Pacific side of the Kantō region, and it has an unusual distinction: it was developed as a barrier-free beach, with matting laid across the sand and beach wheelchairs available, one of the first in Japan to be planned that way. Behind it, the Ōarai Marine Tower rises sixty metres as a triangular glass-clad shaft with an observation deck taking in the coast, the port and the flat farmland inland. Aqua World, the prefectural aquarium, is among the largest in the country and holds Japan's biggest collection of shark species, well over fifty. The port itself is a serious commercial harbour: overnight ferries sail from here to Tomakomai in Hokkaido, an eighteen- to twenty-hour passage that is the fastest sea link between the Kantō region and the northern island. Inland from the town, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency runs a research campus with experimental reactors, which supplies the town with a technical workforce that most fishing towns of this size do not have.

What the anime did. In 2012 the television series Girls und Panzer was set in Ōarai, and the town was drawn with unusual fidelity — the shopping streets, the shrine steps, the ferry terminal, the marine tower, individual shopfronts. What followed is the most frequently cited example of an anime materially changing a local economy. The town had been hit hard by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which flooded the port and emptied the beaches of visitors for a season. Local businesses, working with the production, each adopted a character: life-size panels went up outside shops along the arcade, individual proprietors learned their character's biography, and fans came to visit shops rather than just landmarks. Character manhole covers followed. The Ōarai Anglerfish Festival each November, previously a modest local event, has drawn crowds in the six figures. More than a decade on, the panels are still maintained, the shrine still sells illustrated votive tablets, and the collaboration has outlasted the series' own broadcast run by a wide margin — largely because it was built around individual shopkeepers rather than a single visitor centre.

What to eat. The anglerfish that gives the November festival its name is the local winter speciality, served as a stew rich enough to justify the trip and, in the festival's signature version, butchered on a hook in public as the fish is too slippery to work on a board. Beyond that: whitebait, clams from the sandy shallows, and the sweet potatoes for which Ibaraki is the leading producer in Japan.

Getting there and timing. The Ōarai Kashima Line, run by the Kashima Rinkai Railway, connects Mito to Ōarai in about fifteen minutes; Mito is roughly ninety minutes from Tokyo's Ueno Station by limited express. The town is compact and flat, with a circular tourist bus linking the station, the shrine, the beach and the aquarium. Summer fills the beach; November brings the festival and the clearest air; the New Year sunrise is the single busiest morning of the year. Winter here is cold, dry and extremely windy off the ocean.