I found that when I went to Yakushima I saw a lot more of the things you see in anime (even just stuff like the shapes of the buses) compared to Tokyo. I suspect that just like with novels or movies, a lot of the time creators set things in the world they grew up in as kids, so the world you see through media is the world as it was 20 years ago rather than now. Tokyo changes rapidly, whereas the countryside is similar to how it was.

Is the anime-fan subculture really looked down on in the US? Here in Europe it seems to be growing a lot, part of a general status upgrade for "nerdy" interests.