25% of participants became true couples at mock school day event

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Washimiya, the Kuki City neighborhood that is home to the "Lucky Star shrine," held its second "Ota-Konkatsu" matchmaking event for otaku on July 17. The local chamber of commerce and industry's youth division again produced the "Ota-Konkatsu Washimiya Gakuen-Hen ~Shumi Bakari no Kimi-tachi e~" event.

The event randomly chose 20 men and 20 women from the 251 men and 35 women who applied, and from those 40 participants, the event produced five couples.

The matchmaking event this time took place in a high school, which had the participants attend a mock school day. The participants were first each assigned a classroom duty to perform. The participants then took three classes. For a modern Japanese class, participants filled in blank word balloons in groups of four in their "textbooks" - a volume of the Lucky Star manga. For a society class, an associate professor at the Hokkaido University Center for Advanced Tourism Studies (in cosplay) taught participants how to create "moe comic haiku." And for a home economics class, the participants made daifuku (rice cakes stuffed with bean jam) in groups with a baker from a local confectionery shop.

The chamber of commerce and industry's youth division said that while it hadn't decided a date for the next event yet, it "definitely wants to come up with an elaborate plan for the next event as well."

The first event, held last November, picked 20 men and 20 women from a lottery of the 386 men and 115 women who applied to attend the event. Out of the 20 couples paired at the event, seven became actual couples. For this year's event, men and women who applied had to be between 20-40 years old, and had to either be some kind of otaku, or be understanding and sympathetic to otaku.

Washimiya is the home of Washinomiya Shrine, which was used as the basis for a location in Kyoto Animation's 2007 television adaptation of Kagami Yoshimizu's manga Lucky Star. It has since become a popular destination for anime fans, who make "pilgrimages" to the shrine. The concept for the dating event originated in 2009, when many visiting fans who filled out surveys said that they were interested in marriage.