How Overseas Fans Do Oshi-Katsu: The New Market Tourism Is Creating

Tourism is no longer only about seeing famous sights. More people now travel for a favorite artist's live show, the setting of a work, a sports match or a limited-time collaboration. With the oshi at the center of the itinerary, lodging, meals and shopping all fold into that story.

Oshi-katsu tourism is not advertising that draws people to a tourist spot. It is the work of building, together with the region, the reason a fan thinks “I want to go there”.

What sets this kind of trip apart from ordinary tourism is that you can't choose the dates yourself. The date of the live show or match comes first, and transport and lodging are fitted around it. Then comes the decision of whether to book a room before the ticket lottery result is out, or to look after you win.

That is why an ensei, a trip to see your oshi, is decided less by the appeal of the destination than by whether you can get there on that day. Fans take the first train home the morning after the final show, or walk around town for just a few hours before the doors open, and they plan how to spend their limited time with surprising precision.

The cost breakdown differs from ordinary travel too. Transport and lodging often weigh more than the ticket itself, and swings in exchange rates and fuel surcharges, or price rises over long holidays, hit directly. For overseas shows, the cost of getting there is often higher than the concert ticket.

Still, people go because some things happen only on that day. Even the same song is staged differently depending on the venue, and some moments can be shared only by the people who were there. An experience that can't be duplicated is worth traveling for. Demand for oshi-katsu tourism springs from this single point.

Even among overseas visitors, the guidance needed differs between someone visiting Japan for the first time and someone who attends shows again and again. Concrete information on how to get to the venue, reservation conditions and what you may bring, not just an introduction to the work, can ease worries beyond the language barrier.

Overseas fan communities develop forms of support suited to their region: birthday ads, cup holder events, dance covers, costume recreations and fan meetings. They don't just wait for official projects; fans rent spaces and gather friends themselves.

The differences between countries are not differences in the size of the passion. The same love takes different shapes to suit each place's rules, towns and habits of getting together.

In South Korea, for example, a culture has grown of renting a cafe for an oshi's birthday, decorating it and handing out cup holders and postcards to everyone who comes. In Chinese-speaking regions, fans pool money for ads and donations as an established practice. In Europe and North America, the main form is gathering at large conventions and spending the day on cosplay and panels.

All of these start from the same wish to celebrate the oshi, but the form changes with the spaces available, the distances people can travel to gather and the rules for advertising. Overseas expansion stumbles not on the passion of support but when a Japanese approach is brought in without knowing what is allowed locally and what is normal there.

Walking through the setting of a work lets you feel with your body the distances, even the smells, of scenery you had only seen on screen. Fans find the shop or station that served as the model and line up scenes from the work with their own photos. A pilgrimage site is a place to reread the story in real life.

The more visitors there are, the more consideration is needed for residents' lives and for photography manners. Respecting the site as a place where people live, instead of consuming it is the condition for welcoming the next fans.

Most of the trouble at pilgrimage sites comes not from malice but from ignorance. The railroad crossing or slope that appeared in a work is a school route or local road for residents. Standing in the roadway to shoot the same composition, lingering at the gate of private property, gathering in large groups early in the morning: actions that bothered no one inside the work become a nuisance in reality.

Whether a region keeps welcoming visitors seems to be decided mostly in the first few months. If signs and photo-friendly spots are shown in advance and a contact for trouble is ready, fans can enjoy themselves with confidence rather than hesitation. Clearly marking welcoming places ends up working better than listing prohibitions.

At the destination, fans sometimes meet other fans for the first time, trade goods and share information. On overseas trips, even when the languages differ, the same song or character opens a conversation. The oshi serves as a shared signpost.

Rather than managing exchanges too tightly, the official side can set safe rules and provide places for them. Room for fans to grow their own culture raises satisfaction with the trip.

On the other hand, deals at the destination call for caution. Handing over tickets in front of a venue, or trading goods with someone you met on social media, can go ahead without your knowing who the other person is. If the countries differ, refund and consultation services may not be available either.

When the official side provides authorized resale or trading spaces, fans don't have to take risky routes. Don't stop the exchanges; set up a safe place first. That is not control but preparation for taking part.

Exchange works even when the language doesn't fully get through. Song titles, the names members are called, set choreography: a shared vocabulary already exists, so conversation begins without translation. Japanese fans being able to line up their dance moves at an overseas venue also owes to this common language.

But keeping the connections made there from ending after a single day takes more than swapping contact details. At which show can you meet next, and which regions have events open to the public? Even if the official side simply published each country's schedule in one place, reunions among fans would become more likely.

Draw people with limited-edition goods alone, and the relationship ends when the giveaway does. What's needed is a design in which each visit brings a different discovery, with local shops, stamp rallies, public transport and seasonal events.

Fans come to love the region, and the region comes to understand the power of fans. With the oshi as the way in, both sides create the next story, and that leads to sustainable tourism.

What's hard for a region is that visits concentrate on particular days. On the day of an event there aren't enough hotels or restaurants, and the following week it's back to normal. The bigger the swing, the less local businesses can add facilities or staff.

What helps is a reason to come on days other than the event itself: keep an exhibition up for its whole run, extend the period during which stamps are available, create weekday-only perks. If visits can be stretched thin and long, the region finds it easier to prepare, and fans can visit while avoiding the crowds.

A region has its own conditions for keeping going. Projects stall when the person in charge is transferred, when the first year's budget isn't granted the next year, or when only the burden is left on local shops. Not a few initiatives have disappeared this way.

What long-lasting examples share is a part that local people keep going for themselves. A relationship in which they show fans the good things the town already had is less strained than a shop that stays open by putting up with it for the fans.

The conversations and kindnesses that never show up in travel photos also become important memories of the region that fans take home.

Oshi-katsu tourism is not a measure that merely moves fans around as numbers. Through the object of their love, people get to know a town, fans connect with each other, and the region may gain a new sense of pride too. Designing a trip that is comfortable for both those who visit and those who live there is what creates the next kind of tourism.

Whether this kind of travel can continue depends less on fans' passion than on how much capacity the receiving side has. The number of rooms, the frequency of transport, people who can show visitors around: if a large crowd arrives somewhere that isn't ready, it wears out in the first year.

Conversely, if you don't chase scale, even a small town can make it work. A design in which people come little by little through the year, instead of a thousand at once, can continue without disrupting local life.