Biography|Hikaru Kondo — A Heritage Building in Tokushima Became the Hometown Studio Shop

Kondo is from Tokushima Prefecture. The public proof of that loyalty is a cafe in a listed building, not a plaque on a childhood house.

In April 2009 ufotable opened a Tokushima studio inside what is now the Kokusai Higashi-Funaba 113 Building at 1-13 Higashi-Funaba-cho.

The structure is the former Takahara Building, a registered tangible cultural property with round windows on the Shinmachi Boardwalk.

In July 2009 the company added ufotable Cafe Tokushima on the second floor of the same block.

A Gigazine reporter who stood outside on 20 July 2009 watched the line form before the delayed 17:40 opening.

The brief matched Nakano: original art on the walls, collaboration food on the tables, and a short walk between the drawing desks and the street.

Tokushima was not a branch logo on a map. From 2009 Kondo tied the studio to city and prefectural work and to a festival that used the downtown as its venue.

The cafe still occupies the same 2F address. Admission is free walk-in, unlike the lottery system later bolted onto the Tokyo shop.

The pin is the heritage block on the boardwalk, a building a visitor can photograph without asking anyone for a key.

It is not a private residence and not the later Shinjuku tower floor.

From this riverfront the company would add a cinema two streets over and a twice-yearly event that filled the bridges.

Photo: Thirteen-fri, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons