Visited Kyoto! (Pt 2) International Manga Museum

On our second day of experiencing manga-anime culture in Kyoto, we were brought through a guided tour in the Kyoto International Manga Museum. I really liked this place. In fact I think I might have enjoyed it a bit more than Kyomaf haha.

At first I was like "pfffft another gaijin attraction. I want to go to a real manga place that real Japanese people go to..." But the amount of effort they put into introducing how manga is in Japan really shows, and it not just fun but also very impressive. And actually probably like 80% of the visitors there were Japanese lol.

What's cool about this place is that it actually used to be a Japanese elementary school. So the staffroom has been converted into a ごろごろ space where people can just lay around inside, chill and read manga. The hallways were decorated with drawings from 100 different mangaka's of how they pictured a "maiko" (geisha-in-training). And the field where children used to run about is now also a big open place for people to just enjoy reading manga.

From the name of this place you'd think this was some old and dusty place with moth eaten manga or something, but it wasn't anything like that! Kyoto's  houses more than 300,000 manga and comics from all over the world and 50,000 of that is shelved all over the museum so you could just pick one off the shelf any time! The rest of the 250,000 manga are actually archived for research.

Researching manga. How cool does that get. That was like my childhood dream haha.
 There were also hands on exhibits and displays about the manga industry, from the process of creating a manga to how manga is sold overseas. (A newbie mangaka earns as little as only about like 1000USD a month for all that hard work!) And then the bit I enjoyed most -- students who graudated from the manga academy conducted daily workshops on how to ink the draft of a manga for printing, and also did manga illustrations for only 1000y!

Look at that whole set of copic markers *q*

...Guess which one all rushed to HAHAHA. We're a self loving bunch! XD (Except Iman, who went for the manga-inking workshop at first... and then went back again at night to get a portrait hehe XD)

Pictures of us with our mini protraits. They only took about 15minutes each!

Group picture with Alodia! :D

There was also a small cafe that served some simple food with illustrated walls! 

The manga museum was a really enjoyable place and I think anyone who loved reading manga at any point of their lives would love this place as well. Wish they would let us take more pictures inside so I could show you how cool it was though. Definitely worth a visit if you're in Kyoto!