John Manjirō, the Japanese fisherman rescued in 1841, travelled from Tosashimizu in Japan to Honolulu, Fairhaven and New Bedford in Massachusetts, then home via Okinawa and Nagasaki.
This route follows the castaway from his fishing village to the wreck on Torishima, his school years in Fairhaven, whaling in the South Seas, the California gold fields, and his return to a closed Japan. Several stops are approximate: the sources name the places but not exact spots.
Sakamoto Ryōma, the Tosa samurai of the last shogunate years, is remembered across Kōchi, Nagasaki and Kyoto: from his birthplace memorial to Kameyama Shachū, the Teradaya inn and the Ōmiya Inn.
The route follows him from his birth in 1836 through the founding of Kameyama Shachū in 1865, the Teradaya raid of 1866 and his death at the Ōmiya Inn in 1867, then ends at the Katsurahama museum that keeps his letters.
Francis Drake's circumnavigation ran from Plymouth through San Julian, Valparaíso and Callao to California and the Spice Islands of Ternate. The voyage lasted from 1577 to 26 September 1580.
This route follows seven stops, from the storm-hit departure at Plymouth to treasure at Callao and a royal welcome on Ternate. Several places are approximate, and the California landing is only traditionally identified.
Gone with the Wind is set in Georgia: Tara lies about five miles outside Jonesboro, and Scarlett O'Hara's Atlanta runs along Peachtree Street. The depot, Five Points and Oakland Cemetery are real Atlanta places the story names.
The route follows the novel from the eve of the Civil War through the depot and Five Points in the fall of Atlanta in 1864, and ends at the Margaret Mitchell House, where the book was written.
Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona is set in Barcelona and Oviedo and shot there and in Avilés, from the rooftop of Casa Milà to the Hotel de la Reconquista and the Avilés lighthouse.
The route follows the summer of Vicky and Cristina in story order: Gaudí's chimneys, a spur-of-the-moment weekend in Asturias, Park Güell and the arched gate of Sant Pau. Each stop is a place where a scene from the film was set or shot.
Nomadland follows Fern, a widow who leaves the Nevada gypsum town of Empire in a van, past a desert gathering in Arizona and a campground in South Dakota's Badlands National Park, to the restaurant at Wall Drug and the coast at Point Arena, California.
The route takes the film's places in story order, five stops across four states. The Arizona stop is approximate: the pin marks Quartzsite, where Bob Wells's real nomad gathering is held.
When Harry Met Sally... begins with a drive out of the University of Chicago and settles into Manhattan, from the Washington Square Arch and Central Park to Katz's Delicatessen, where Sally makes her famous point.
The route follows the pair from graduation in 1977 to a New Year's Eve declaration at the Puck Building, with seven stops: Cobb Gate, the Washington Square Arch, the Loeb Boathouse, the Temple of Dendur, Katz's, Cafe Luxembourg and the Puck Building. Stops follow the film's scene order, not a single journey.
The Karate Kid was filmed across Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley: Daniel's South Seas apartments in Reseda, the street in Canoga Park where Miyagi's house stood, the beach at Leo Carrillo and the final tournament at the Matadome in Northridge.
The route follows Daniel's arrival in California, from the Reseda apartment where he and his mother arrive, past West Valley High and the Cobra Kai dojo, to Ali's house in Encino, the go-karts at Golf N' Stuff and the lake in the Chatsworth preserve where Miyagi teaches balance. Most of the places still stand, though Miyagi's house was demolished.
In 1974 Bruce Chatwin set out for Patagonia to find his own "piece of brontosaurus": a scrap of skin sent to his grandmother by her cousin, Charley Milward the sailor. Six months of travel became In Patagonia, the book that made his name.
This route follows the quest from a natural history museum in La Plata through the Welsh coast, Butch Cassidy's cabin and Milward's house in Punta Arenas, to the cave where the skin was found. Chatwin's tales were not always literal, so most pins mark areas, not scenes.
Lin Zexu's crackdown on the opium trade in Canton in 1839 set off a war that ended three years later with a treaty signed on a British warship in the Yangtze. The route follows it from the Pearl River to Nanjing.
Seven stops cover the confiscation, the destruction of the opium at Humen, the clashes at Chuenpi and Dinghai, the raising of the flag at Hong Kong, the fall of Zhenjiang and the treaty talks at Jinghai Temple. Several places have changed beyond recognition, which the notes mark.
In Ishin!, Sakamoto Ryōma flees Tosa as a murder suspect, hides in Kyoto under the name Saitō Hajime and joins the Shinsengumi to find the masked killer of his adoptive father. The game is fiction built on real history: its Ryōma, its plot and its twists belong to the game, while the Teradaya attack and the Ōmiya killing really happened.
The route follows the story from Kōchi Castle through the Shinsengumi's Mibu, Gion and Fushimi to the Ōmiya Inn, and each stop says what is the game and what is the record.
In December 1831 a 22-year-old Cambridge graduate with a passion for beetles and rocks sailed from Plymouth as an unpaid naturalist on HMS Beagle, a ten-gun survey brig. The voyage was meant to take two years and took five. Charles Darwin came home with crates of fossils, skins and notebooks — and with questions about the islands that would lead him, two decades later, to On the Origin of Species.
The route follows the ship around the world in order, using Darwin's own Journal of Researches for dates and details: the volcanic Cape Verde islands, the Brazilian forest, the fossil beds of Argentina, Tierra del Fuego, a great Chilean earthquake, the Galápagos, Cape Town and home to Falmouth.
In October 1934 the Chinese Communists' main army, beaten by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, broke out of its base in Jiangxi and fled west. A year and some 9,000 kilometres later, after river crossings under fire, snow passes and a high-altitude swamp, a few thousand survivors reached northern Shaanxi. On the way, Mao Zedong rose to lead the party, and the retreat became its founding legend.
The route follows the Central Red Army, the best-known of several Long March columns, in date order. Official histories have polished some episodes, and historians still argue about how much fighting there was at Luding Bridge; the texts note where accounts disagree. Most stops now have memorials and museums.
