Halloween eat your heart out! The crazy costumes at Osaka’s Nippombashi Street Festa—Osaka’s biggest cosplay event—are seriously out of this world.
At Osaka’s Nippombashi Street Festa, you can meet a real-life Pikachu, Super Mario, or just about any other anime, manga, or video-game character you could think of. Bringing together over 200,000 fans and 10,000 cosplayers each year, anime and manga lovers celebrate their nerdy streak as they take over the streets of Den Den Town (electric town) in their elaborate costumes, portraying their favorite characters with uncanny accuracy. The otaku (anime and gaming nerd) army come out to play on this day, photographing posing heroes and heroines like a hungry gang of paparazzi (you’ll never see so much expensive camera equipment in one place!). Roaming the streets of Nippombashi during this event is one of the most surreal, only-in-Japan experiences you can have.