Kyoto International Manga Museum

Above, a view of Kyoto, Japan from Kiyomizu-dera.  Photo by Armand Vaquer.

A few days ago, I blogged about visiting Kyoto, Japan to see the historical sites in the city along with landmarks that met a devastating fate by kaiju.

There's another attraction to lure people to Kyoto.

The Japan Times reported:

KYOTO — Kyoto, with its long history and ancient temples, has acquired an additional and contemporary attraction for tourists — a manga museum that has become a mecca for comic-book and animation fans around the world.

After opening in 2006 in Nakagyo Ward, the city's downtown area where both modern office buildings and traditional townhouses can be found, the Kyoto International Manga Museum is attracting 200,000 to 300,000 visitors a year, including some 30,000 from abroad.

What many of these visitors find irresistible is the "wall of manga," a 200-meter-long wall lined with shelves on which some 50,000 manga published between 1970 and 2005 are stacked up.

So, if you are in Kyoto to see the landmarks trashed by Godzilla and Gamera and happen to be a fan of manga, here's another reason to visit Kyoto.

That's one thing we in America don't have, a comic book museum (or do we?).

To read the full article, go here.