@thencp:

Haha I kind of get what you mean, but then again all people can be surprising XD Like last year for exams we had to put our phones in a box and (even though I hardly have my phone with me) I had it in my pocket and turned it in. When I went to pick it up, my teacher saw all my phone charms (now they broke off ;^;) and happened to ask if I knew Ichigo. It took me way longer than it should have to connect Ichigo with Bleach, but it was still a bit shocking to find out my teacher (mid 30s I think?) was into anime. But still, people are people, and she was a very good teacher ^.^

@Dranzerstorm:

No, I'm not from the UK. I'm Southeast Asian! :D And it was quite a surprise for me because I always thought that teachers won't have the care for anime. Proven wrong. Haha~

I'm not sure this counts, but I learned a few months ago that my grandmother is quite a big anime fan.

Well, there's a lot of them:

- One time, I saw a notebook being sold in a store with a cover portraying a character that looks very much like Conan Edogawa. What's odd here is that it's supposed to be part of a batch of notebooks featuring a particular character, with most of which looking like original characters. I still don't get why they decided to feature Conan though as the only anime character in the batch.

- One brand of chips here in one store features an anime character portraying a young man with a white kimono, a sword, and short brown/black hair. The character reminded me of Kyoshiro from Samurai Deeper Kyo, since they looked a lot like each other.

- Various jeepneys (a type of public transportation vehicle) here in the Philippines feature anime characters in their designs. One jeepney that caught my attention because of its creativity featured a silhouette of the four primary male characters of Gundam Wing.

- A cafe sign in a hidden part of the city utilized the chibi look of Ginji in GetBackers.

- There was also a bakeshop that opened in the past which bore the name "Yakitati Bakeshop". It makes me wonder if that bakeshop got its name from Yakitate! Japan.

- In the past, I remembered seeing a bus with a back window that had an image of what looked like Kaitou Kid from Detective Conan. That was shocking since that was before Kaitou Kid even became popular in my place and before it had its own anime series. It was a shame, though, that I wasn't able to take a picture of it.

@thencp:

Ah, okay. Unexpected, but does make sense. I mean, if your teacher was a man in his 80s, I think I might've been super surprised O_o Not that 80-year-old men can't watch anime... it's just maybe perceived as a bit unusual... then again, I don't usually keep current with viewership demographics.

I must also give a shout-out to whoever goes to MCCC and sports a bumper sticker saying "Mustang/Hawkeye 2012" on the back of their car. Pulling out of the parking lot, it took me by surprise and I had to laugh.

@CelestialSushi:

Well, she was a new teacher. Young, I think in her 20s.
I found it pretty cool that her wallpaper was Elfen Lied. >:D

Perfect example: This semester, my choir teacher Mr. Kosciesza was going down the attendance list and came across this kid's name, Ed. Mr. K says his name and then he goes, "Ed is Ed." and asked if anyone got the reference. Of course, this was a Cowboy Bebop reference but I didn't think immediately of it. He says, "Cowboy Bebop anyone?" and three-quarters of the class goes, "OH!" Being it's my favorite anime, I was like Man, this class is awesome.

@thencp:

Demographically-speaking, how would you describe this teacher? Young, middle-aged, old, male, female, etc.?

My former teacher's laptop. o_o

Oh yeah, just remembered one: I work at my church, and we were taking in donations for a used book event, and someone had donated a Kingdom Hearts manga. Not really anime, but I was surprised to see it all the same.

Thanks for reminding me about it, Darkarax :D

This might not be the most surprising anime encounter, but one time back in school they gave out those book order things. And one of the books in their selection was the very first volume of the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga. That's how I got volume one.

@Dranzerstorm:

The first ending theme for Angelic Layer is fantastic :D

Pleiades's comment reminded me of the Absolut Vodka commercial that featured a clip from Akira. That probably wasn't my most out-of-place anime sighting, but it's the only one I can recall right now. ^^;

Burger King giving out Yu Yu Hakusho toys with their kids meals...
I requested a few characters in specific, like Hiei and they're like...so that's how you pronounce it XD
very cute/cool/random.
Something that might happen in a dream

I remember watching MuchMusic, the Canadian equivalent to MTV, some time ago and caught a video by Squarepusher. While it was playing I thought to myself, "that video that she's watching...is that...Akira?" You can't see it but only hear it, yet if you've watched the original subbed version many times, you should recognize the dialoge and scene!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UAicXgT6AU

I remember seeing One Piece air fresheners inside a Pep Boys. Also a LOOONG time ago, I found a Yu Yu Hakusho figure (Kurama) inside a Kmart. Totally bought it too haha That's not exactly a "random" place, but it was odd at the time.

I'm taking a class on the history of Tokyo. One day, my teacher plays Akira. That isn't the surprising part. After class, I overhear these two guys, who are the textbook definition of preppy jocks, talking about watching Deathnote. Maybe you would have to meet them, but it surprised me.

There's this dude at my college who has a giant decal of Haruhi Suzumiya on the driver side door of his car. I always face palm when I see it.

When my friends and I were on the freeway coming back from AX. The car in front of us had the window sprayed "Honk if you're going to AX!" I thought that was pretty cool and funny. It's the first time I ever seen something like that.

I remember once while leaving a Wal-Mart I saw one of those little capsule machines in the outer gate area where they have stuff like that (and carts, and a redbox usually) with a picture of Osaka and Chiyo-chan from Azumanga Daioh, advertising friendship necklaces or rings or bracelets or something that you could win from the capsule machine. I freaked out and went back to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, and my mom thought I knew someone from the missing persons list or something. XD Like CelestialSushi's example, I don't think they had permission to use the Azumanga Daioh characters.

And a not-so-random example from my travels a few years ago that I guess actually makes some sense, my grandpa was flipping channels on our hotel TV in Thailand and they were airing an early episode of Naruto. It was dubbed in Thai, so I couldn't understand anything, but it was still kind of interesting - ironic too because we were just in Japan a week before.

At CWPrice (place where I work) we sell Ojamajo DoReMi scrubs. Yes, scrubs. If I was a nurse, I'd rock those.

What drives me crazy is when you get those random advertisements that feature anime characters... I saw one recently that had some of the chibi pictures from the Azumanga Daioh manga... and Tomo was featured on it twice (they probably thought she was two different characters because her hair was two different lengths). What irks me is that it doesn't seem likely they got permission to use those images (granted, I'm just assuming here...) >_<

Okay, it wasn't a completely unexpected place, but I didn't expect to see such a blatant use of intellectual property.

I know there have been other places I've seen them but I can't exactly think of them at the moment. But I know I've been surprised by anime in weird places before!

The Dollar Tree has/had Rurouni Kenshin pictured on the packaging of a very cheaply made plastic sword.. lol