Osaka’s Nipponbashi area used to be full of electronics stores, but some 15 years ago the number of customers buying anime movies started to increase and shops began to answer to that need.

By the end of the 1990’s, lots of figure and comic stores appeared, while maid cafe’s began to sprout up some 4 years ago.

These days Nipponbashi is full of stores with anime and manga related items and has become an otaku heaven, similar to Tokyo’s Akihabara.

To celebrate Nipponbashi’s new image, Nippon Street Festa Osaka, an annual cosplay event was started in 2005 by Osaka City and Den Den Town, Nipponbashi’s shopping district. It was a great hit attracting some 800 cosplayers and 150,000 visitors.

This year, the fourth Nippon Street Festa Osaka took place and it is now slowly becoming a famous event. I even ran into 4 non-Japanese cosplayers this time!

To get a taste of what Nippon Street Festa Osaka looks like, have a look at the photographs of this fun cosplay event.

Be sure to put this event in your April calendar for 2009!