Japan loves package tours. For many of them, you meet up with your tour guide and fellow travelers, hop on a bus for the countryside, then spend a few days relaxing in a hotel with some occasional shopping or sampling of local delicacies. It’s more or less the definition of safe and convenient, if not exactly exciting, travel.
If you’re looking for a trip with a little more adrenaline, though, there’s a tour next month that includes an activity set to get any anime fan’s pulse racing: helping to create the Attack on Titan live-action movie.
Not content with their domination of the manga and anime worlds, the Titans are next advancing into live-action film, with director Shinji Higuchi helming the project, which is set to premiere in 2015. It’s also cast the lead role of Eren Jaeger, who’ll be played by popular actor Haruma Miura, and the producers have decided on a handful of filming locations, as well.
What the movie still needs, though, are extras, which is where Japan’s largest travel provider, JTB, comes in. If you’re looking to take a trip from June 7-10, JTB will take you, plus the 49 other Attack on Titan fans it hopes to recruit, to the movie’s filming site in Ibaraki Prefecture to help bring the immensely popular animated series to life.
This isn’t a cursory “movie experience” tour where participants spend a scant five minutes on set, either. After departing Tokyo by charter bus on the evening of June 7, travelers will arrive a few hours later in Hitachi City, have a few hours to sleep, then spend the next three days as extras on the Attack on Titan set. Travelers will stay at the Hotel Route Inn Hitachi Taga, the walls of which may or may not be Titan-defense certified.
There are a few criteria extras have to meet, although neither the ability to destroy a 60-meter wall or a willingness to bite your own hand and draw blood are required. You will need to be 20 or older, though (20 being the start of legal adulthood in Japan), plus be no taller than 185 centimeters (approximately 6 feet, 1 inch) and no heavier than 85 kilograms (187 pounds).
JTB says that while applications are primarily being accepted on a first-come, first-served basis, it does reserve the right to select appropriate applicants in order to maintain a balance in gender and age across the pool of extras.
The package is priced at 39,800 yen (US$394), includes transportation to and from Tokyo and three nights’ accommodation, and can be signed up for right here. Lunch is provided on-set, and breakfast is included as well, but for dinner you’ll have to find some ramen, or tasty humans, on your own.
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