11th of May: Kagoshima, Apothecary Diaries Exhibition in Fukuoka

We're on our way home, but we still have a bit of time to walk around Kagoshima city. It is an important city for the Satsuma Rebellion, and this is fairly close to the place where the national hero Saigo Takamori died (rebelling against the government!)

Note that in Ueno he's depicted with his favourite dog, but not in Kagoshima. This is mentioned in the second season of "Love, Chuunibyo and Other Delusions"

There's a very loud but small central park, and there's a Shiroyama mountain park right next to it

The park is very tropical

Very, very tropical

The mountain path is very easy to walk. The elevation is roughly 90 metres in 1 kilometer

This is, too, a place for a school trip!

The mountain road leads to an observation deck. You can see the Sakurajima volcano from it really well! The volcano is very active, and it's just 4 kilometres away from the city. It used to be an island, but it became a peninsula in 1914 eruption. There were two eruptions in the last ten years, and apparently it's possible to find magma on the streets sometimes!

The observation deck looks exactly like in the anime. There are nice volunteer guides around explaining stuff about local achievements (giant daikon, for example)

The heart of Kagoshima is, probably, a huge shopping arcade Tenmonkan. It has everything!

Of course it's mentioned in "Love, Chuunibyo", butI believe it's also featured as one of the locations in Robotics;Notes DaSH, though I can't find the screenshots somehow.

Shotengai arcades are fun 😍

This cute shop doesn't sell frogs. It's just... the owner REALLY likes frogs. They sell products made of activated charcoal and make frog puns

One of the ramen shops serves Buddhist diet ramen - no animal products, no five pungent roots. It's tasty! The store looks exactly like ramen shops you maybe saw in dramas or anime. The staff was very welcoming!

The city tram has umbrellas you can borrow. You're asked to return them to another tram!

The umbrella's handle has a frog pun, too.

Kagoshima JR station has a huge tapestry showing off Shinkansen series 800, a local variant of Shinkansen.

We arrived to Fukuoka with hopes of just crashing at the hotel, but there was an ad about Apothecary Diaries exhibition at the train station, so we had to go...

Fukuoka is huge, and it's definitely has much more than an overly expensive exhibition at the train station shopping mall, but it is what it is. Our Fukuoka memories will be Apothecary Diaries merch and the airport.

If you didn't know, Apothecary Diaries is a very popular novel series that recently got its second season of anime. It's really, really good!

The exhibition is mostly about the anime; the part that can be photographed is devoted to the first season. The area about the second season, the area with commemorative arts and the autograph area is "strictly no photo".

This is a chart showing the relationships between the characters

The most important scenes are presented in key frames and time charts

Episode one, key frame 40, Maomao is a cat!

Episode 1, key frame 43: Maomao is kidnapped and sold off 😭

Character designs

Gag face designs

Original animation key frame

More key frames

Gyokuyou!!! 😍

Sorry for the photo quality, the exhibition is actually pretty popular, and it's difficult to get a good shot without being rude to other visitors

If you're wondering: blue is "shadow", yellow is "highlight". Other colours hint at what the colour need to be, if present