Look Back is set around the hometown of manga artist Tatsuki Fujimoto, Nikaho in Akita Prefecture, and the live-action film of 2026 was shot mainly there, from the cherry-tree lane at Kunpuen to Nikaho Station. The story follows Fujino and Kyomoto, two girls who draw manga together. It became an anime film in June 2024.
The route follows the story from Fujino's childhood walks in Nikaho and the bookshop in Hirasawa, to the rebuilt bedroom sets at the station and the Smile centre, and on to the art university in Yamagata where the story turns.
Massan, the NHK drama of 2014–2015, is set in Glasgow, Takehara, Osaka and Yoichi, and is based on the life of Nikka Whisky founder Masataka Taketsuru and his Scottish wife Rita.
The route follows Masaharu and Ellie from Scotland and Japan's early whisky years at Yamazaki to the Yoichi Distillery in Hokkaido, with notes on what the real couple did. Scenes set in Scotland were not filmed there.
The Last Samurai (2003) is set in Japan in 1876 but was filmed mostly in Taranaki, New Zealand, where Mount Taranaki stands in for Mount Fuji, plus Engyō-ji near Himeji, Chion-in in Kyoto and Castle Green in Pasadena.
This route follows Nathan Algren's story from the opening restaurant scene to the parade ground, the fog battle, Katsumoto's village, his temple and the emperor's palace, and shows where each one really is. Several stops are sets or stand-ins.
Shunji Iwai's Love Letter (1995) is set in snowy Otaru and Kobe, but Otaru stands in for both. This route follows the filming locations: the Former Nippon Yusen Otaru Branch as the library, Otaru City Hall as the hospital, Irinai crossing and Temiya Park.
It starts at the Former Suhara Residence, which doubles as the Fujii house in Kobe, and follows Hiroko's letters to Itsuki. Some sites are open to visitors; others are a city office or a public street.
Departures (Okuribito), the 2008 film, was shot around Sakata, Kaminoyama and Tsuruoka in Yamagata, Japan. The story follows a cellist who becomes an encoffinment mortician in his hometown.
The route visits the Concerto café in Kaminoyama, the NK Agent office and Minato-za cinema in Sakata, the Tsuru-no-yu bathhouse in Tsuruoka and Amarume Station. Several buildings have moved or closed since filming.
Tokyo Story (1953) follows an elderly couple from Onomichi to Tokyo and the hot spring town of Atami, with filming at Jōdo-ji temple, Ueno Park, Tokyo Station and Osaka Castle.
The route follows the film in order: the Onomichi temple of its famous dawn scene, the Adachi suburbs, the Atami seawall, Ueno Park, Tokyo Station and Osaka Castle. Several original film spots, such as the Atami seawall, are gone.
The Wolverine (2013) is set in Tokyo and Nagasaki, but it was filmed at Zojo-ji Temple, Nakagin Capsule Tower, Fukuyama Station and the port of Tomonoura, plus a reserve near Sydney standing in for 1945.
The route follows Logan from a prisoner-of-war camp in August 1945 to Yashida's funeral in Tokyo, a bullet-train fight and a hideout in a love hotel, ending in the fishing port of Tomonoura. Several scenes were shot in Australia, and the Nakagin tower no longer stands.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is set in Tokyo, but most of it was shot in Los Angeles; Shibuya Crossing is the best-known real Tokyo spot.
This route follows Sean Boswell from his Arizona school to the car meets, garages and mountain pass of the film, and shows the Los Angeles locations that stood in for Tokyo, from Hawthorne Plaza to San Gabriel Dam. Several scenes are pinned to the stand-in, not the story setting.
Sansho the Bailiff (Sanshō Dayū) follows Anju and Zushiō, two noble children sold into slavery, from Naoetsu in Niigata to Tango in northern Kyoto and back to Sado Island. Mizoguchi's 1954 film and Mori Ōgai's 1915 story both retell an older oral tale.
The route runs from the Naoetsu bridge where the family is torn apart, through Yura and the Tango Kokubunji to Kyoto and Sado, and ends on Mount Iwaki, where Anju's memory lives on. The legend is fictional, so most pins are approximate.
The film Battle Royale (2000) was filmed on Hachijō-kojima, at a school location in Oni-ishi, Gunma, at Tsurugisaki Lighthouse in Miura and at Toei Tokyo Studio, and it ends in Shibuya, Tokyo.
The story is set on a fictional island, so these five stops follow the film from the class waking on the island to the last run toward Shibuya Station. Each pin marks where a scene was shot.
Points and Lines is set between Tokyo Station and the beach at Kashii in Fukuoka, while Castle of Sand follows a detective from the Kamata rail yard in Tokyo to Akita and Shimane. Seichō Matsumoto's two best-known crime novels turn Japan's railways into the clues.
This route follows both stories: the four-minute gap on Tokyo Station's platforms, the Kashii shore, and the stations named Kameda that lead the detective to Kamedake. Pins at Kashii and Kamata are approximate.
XO, Kitty, the spin-off of the To All the Boys films, is set at a fictional Seoul school but filmed at real places: Incheon International Airport, Kaywon University of Art and Design, the Dongdaemun Design Plaza and Hwaseong Fortress's Seojangdae.
The route follows Kitty's first season from landing at the airport to the end-of-term talent show, taking in a hotel exterior at State Tower Namsan, Nodeul Island on the Han River and the Independence Hall of Korea in Cheonan. The school itself is fictional, and its interiors were shot at other sites around Seoul.
Bond's Japanese mission was shot largely on location: at the Kuramae Kokugikan sumo hall and Hotel New Otani in Tokyo, at Kobe Docks, at Himeji Castle and on the volcano of Shinmoedake in Kagoshima. Filming ran from July 1966 to March 1967, and most of the locations are identifiable.
The route follows Bond from a sumo tournament in Tokyo to the Ama fishing village and the volcano base of Blofeld. Many of these sites can still be seen, though the Kuramae Kokugikan has since been demolished and the SPECTRE base interior was a Pinewood set.
Bayside Shakedown is set in Tokyo's fictional Wangan Precinct, and its real home is Odaiba: Fuji Television's headquarters, the island and the Rainbow Bridge that gives the second film its title.
The police comedy began on Fuji TV in 1997, the year the network moved to Odaiba, then a half-empty district. This route follows the show from the studio to Tokyo Teleport Station, the shot-in-Shiomi precinct and a Kyoto road junction that doubled for the bridge.
TBS's spy thriller VIVANT is set in the fictional Republic of Balka but was filmed in Mongolia, at Sükhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar and the Gobi's Bayanzag cliffs, then across Japan, from Kanda Myojin in Tokyo to Izumo Grand Shrine. Its Mongolian shoot alone ran two and a half months.
This route follows Nogi's story from Balka to Tokyo and back through Shimane, with stops in Mongolia and Japan. Some of the Japanese sets are offices and are not for visiting.
In 1600 an English pilot came ashore in Japan. FX's Shōgun renames the players — John Blackthorne is William Adams, Lord Toranaga is Tokugawa Ieyasu, Lady Mariko is Hosokawa Gracia — and moves the shipwreck from Usuki to the Izu village of Ajiro. This route follows the documented places behind the drama, from the real landing at Usuki and the regents' court at Osaka Castle to the mansion where Gracia died, Adams's shipyard at Itō, his house in Nihonbashi and his grave at Hirado. The 2024 series was filmed in British Columbia.
Alice in Borderland begins with three friends running through Shibuya and ends with Arisu and Usagi fighting for the city itself. Between those points the series empties Tokyo, then lets it grow over. This route follows the real Shibuya landmarks the characters use — the scramble crossing, the Hachikō gate, Shibuya Stream, 109 and SHIBUYA SKY — and visits the two sets where the empty and overgrown city was built, in Ashikaga and Yokohama.
The story never leaves Tokyo; the production did. This route follows the Netflix series, not Haro Aso's manga, and each stop keeps the story place and its stand-in apart.
In the early 1900s a Russian army surveyor, Vladimir Arsenyev, mapped the wild Ussuri taiga with the help of Dersu Uzala, an indigenous hunter who read the forest better than any map. Arsenyev's memoir became a classic, and Akira Kurosawa turned it into an Oscar-winning film in 1975.
The route follows the story from Vladivostok to Lake Khanka and the Sikhote-Alin, then to Khabarovsk, Dersu's lost grave and the film's shooting base. Pins mark regions and towns, not exact campsites.
Haruhi Suzumiya never names its city: it is Nishinomiya in Hyogo, with North High on Nishinomiya Kita High School, the SOS Brigade's café on Coffee-ya Dream, stops at Kōyōen and Mount Kabuto. The story follows Kyon and a classmate's club for aliens, time travellers and espers.
The route visits the real places that served as models: the school, two stations, a riverside park, a mountain and Koshien Stadium. Story place names are altered, so most pins mark a model, not a set.
Two Mamoru Hosoda films are built on places from his own life. Summer Wars is set in Ueda, Nagano; Wolf Children draws on Kamiichi, Hosoda's home town in Toyama, and the hills around it.
The route visits Ueda Station and the castle gate seen in Summer Wars, then Hitotsubashi University, a farmhouse in Kamiichi and a school in Namerikawa from Wolf Children. The Kamiichi pin marks the district, not the house.
Girls und Panzer sends high-school girls into tank tournaments, and its home port is a real Japanese town. Ōarai in Ibaraki appears in the series so faithfully that fans flocked to it as soon as the anime aired.
This route follows the story through six places: the harbour of the school ship, the mall and the inn of the episode 4 street battle, the station where the tank trains roll in, and the shrine steps and coast of the film's exhibition match. The series does not name every street, so some pins are approximate.
Gil Pender is a screenwriter with a nostalgia problem, in Paris with a fiancée and her wealthy parents. Every night at midnight a 1920s car pulls up and carries him back to the 1920s, among the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway and the surrealists. By day he is stuck in 2010.
This route follows the film from Monet's garden at Giverny to Pont Alexandre III, with the stops placed from a film-locations guide: where the 1920s scenes are shot you can still sit, eat and shop today. The party and flea-market scenes are approximate.
Studio Ghibli's worlds feel lived-in because Miyazaki went to look at real places: a Welsh mining museum for the village in Castle in the Sky, Visby for the town of Kiki's Delivery Service, the harbour of Tomonoura before Ponyo. Other links are only rumoured, and he has denied at least one, the town of Jiufen in Taiwan for Spirited Away.
This route follows eight films in release order, from 1986 to 2008, and pairs each with the real place reported as its inspiration. Only some of these identifications come from Miyazaki himself, so every stop says whose claim it is, and none of them is a filming location.
A schoolgirl in Kyushu follows a stranger into an abandoned resort, opens a door that was meant to stay shut, and ends up chasing a cat across Japan, closing doors as she goes. Her last door stands in the hometown she lost to the 2011 tsunami.
The route follows her path in story order: Nichinan harbour, the Bungo-Mori roundhouse, Yawatahama port, a Kobe mountain, Ochanomizu and Hijiri Bridge in Tokyo, then Miyako and Orikasa Station in Iwate. The film is animated, so most pins mark places that Wikipedia says its scenes were modelled on, and the Kobe amusement park is disputed.
