It’s my sixth day in Tokyo. I spent the whole of last night standing in the rain at near-zero temperature for about 9 hours. Comiket is insanity. But I’ll talk about that in its own post. Yesterday, I took a trip down to the centre of Tokyo Prefecture, in Kokubunji, a boring place that no sane tourist would visit.

School Days Train Station

I went there in search of two of the train stations featured in the popular bishoujo game and anime series, School Days. It’s 2D meets 3D!

School Days Train StationSchool Days Train Station
Kotonoha taking the train at “Haramihama”

The fictional Haramihama Station was actually designed based on the JR Nishi-Kokubunji Station (JR西国分寺駅) on the Chuuou Line (中央線). You can take the line from Shinjuku Station. It’s the same train as the one you would take to go to Nakano. Just make sure you take Rapid and not Local.

School Days Train StationSchool Days Train Station
Makoto the stalker

School Days Train StationSchool Days Train Station
This shot required me to step over the yellow line

School Days Train StationSchool Days Train Station
I hate Kotonoha

School Days Train StationSchool Days Train Station
Actually, all trains have such advertisements

School Days Train StationSchool Days Train Station
Why is 0verflow’s version so long?

School Days Train StationSchool Days Train Station
Kitafuchuu Station

The train station near their school is actually Kita-Fuchuu Station (北府中駅), just one stop away from Nishi-Kokubunji Station on the Musashino Line (武蔵野線). If you do not exit the gate at Nishi-Kokubunji and instead transfer from the Chuuou Line to the Musashino Line, the price of the ticket (from Shinjuku) is the same.

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View from inside the station

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View from outside the station

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The perspective is a little messed up

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The sign is different, but note the building behind

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Note the house at the left

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No snow

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Maybe they changed the clock…

It takes 30 minutes to get to Nishi-Kokubunji from Shinjuku. I also tried looking for high schools around Kita-Fuchuu Station to see if any of them match the in-game one, but I couldn’t find any. Oh well. And I wonder if 西国分寺 is the inspiration for Sekai’s family name 西園寺…

Thanks to lolipuni for identifying the stations. You can also take a look at additional photos I took around the two stations in my gallery.

And yeah, today was the first day of Comiket 73. It was chaos beyond imagination. For those of you who know how huge Tokyo Big Sight is, imagine every single square metre of it packed with people. Now I know why they don’t allow photographers to take pictures of cosplayers outside of the cosplay zone: there just isn’t space for it.

I’ll make an overall post on Comiket after all three days are over. Looking forward to visiting Shingo’s booth on Monday.

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