Overwatch (called Overwatch 2 until February 2026) sets maps in real places across Africa and Asia: the Temple of Anubis is on the Giza Plateau near Cairo, Petra is in Jordan, Busan is in South Korea, and Neon Junction is inspired by Tokyo.
This route follows ten maps west to east, from Morocco to Tokyo, with the mode, the date each arrived and the real place behind it. Other routes cover Overwatch maps in Europe and in the Americas. Aatlis has no pin because Blizzard names no city in Morocco; Oasis and Suravasa pin only their country.
Where was Yamatai, the kingdom of Queen Himiko? The two leading answers are Yoshinogari in Saga, northern Kyushu, and Makimuku beside the Hashihaka Kofun in Sakurai, Nara.
The route follows the Wei Zhi account of Himiko from Iki Island and the Shikanoshima gold seal to the two rival sites, and ends at the burial mound often linked with her grave. The location of Yamatai is still unsettled.
The Great Buddha of Nara at Tōdai-ji was the work of Emperor Shōmu, who also ordered a temple in every province and moved his capital from Heijō Palace to Kuni-kyō and Shigaraki.
After smallpox, rebellion and poor harvests, Shōmu turned to Buddhism for protection. This route follows him from Nara through two short-lived capitals and a provincial temple in today's Tokyo, back to the Eye-opening Ceremony of 752. Some sites are only ruins or remain approximate.
Lafcadio Hearn's Japan runs from Matsue Castle and Izumo Taisha to Kumamoto, Yaizu and Akama Shrine in Shimonoseki, home of the Kwaidan ghost tale of Hōïchi the Earless.
The route follows his years as a teacher and writer: the samurai house in Matsue, a railway station scene from Kokoro, a fishing town he wrote about, and the shrine that keeps Hōïchi's statue. Hearn does not name the Kumamoto station, so that pin is approximate.
Tamamo-no-Mae, the nine-tailed fox of Japanese legend, ends at the Sesshō-seki, the Killing Stone at Nasu, after a path through Yin Xu in China and Emperor Konoe's court in Kyoto.
The route follows the fox from Daji at the Shang court to the hunt on the Nasu plain, the poison stone and its scattered fragments. The legend names few exact places, so most pins are approximate.
In 1970 Thor Heyerdahl sailed the papyrus boat Ra II from Safi in Morocco to Barbados, with reed from Lake Tana, builders from Lake Titicaca and a finish in Barbados. Today the boat sits in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo.
The route follows the boat from its materials and builders to the departure, the landfall and the museum. Most stops are approximate: sources name the lakes, the port and the island, not exact docks.
Oda Nobunaga's rise runs from Kiyosu Castle and the Okehazama battlefield through Gifu, Mount Hiei, Nagashino and Azuchi to Honnō-ji in Kyoto.
The seven stops follow his campaigns in order, from a family struggle in Owari to the 1582 day Akechi Mitsuhide turned on him. Several are castle ruins or rebuilt replicas, and the Honnō-ji pin marks the rebuilt temple.
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.
Qin Shi Huang's China: his capital Xianyang, Mount Tai, where he proclaimed the empire's unity, the Lingqu Canal near Guilin, and his tomb at Mount Li with the Terracotta Army. He unified the warring states in 221 BC; some of what is told about him is legend.
This route visits seven places tied to him, from Xianyang to the Terracotta Army. Stops marked as legend or speculative (the elixir quest on Zhifu Island, the lost course of the Qin wall) are kept apart from sites that archaeology has confirmed.
The Kojiki, Japan's oldest surviving book, sets its myths in real places: Izumo, which yielded the land, the cave at Takachiho where Amaterasu hid, Kirishima, one candidate for her grandson's descent, and Ise, said to keep her mirror.
This route follows that story to seven places, from Izumo to Takachiho, Kirishima and Ise. The myth is what the text tells; the shrine foundings and excavations are documented history, and each stop keeps the two apart. Several sites are traditional identifications that rival places also claim.
Japan's Kumano Kodō runs from Takijiri-oji through Chikatsuyu to Kumano Hongū Taisha, then by boat to Shingū and on to Nachi's stone steps and falls. For over a thousand years emperors, samurai and commoners walked these trails to the three grand shrines; Go-Shirakawa made the trip 34 times.
This route follows the Nakahechi from Takijiri-oji through Chikatsuyu and Hongū, by river to Shingū, then to Nachi's stone steps and waterfall. Some stops are pinned to the area rather than a surveyed spot.
Sound! Euphonium follows the Kitauji High School concert band, and its story is set in Uji, Kyoto.
The route follows Kumiko's commute on the Keihan Uji Line, crosses Uji Bridge, joins the Agata Festival and climbs Daikichiyama for the view of town. The school itself is fictional, so the route pins a real station in its place.
Toru Watanabe, a drama student in late-1960s Tokyo, looks back on the years he spent between two women: Naoko, the fragile girlfriend of his dead best friend, and Midori, a classmate who is everything Naoko is not. Haruki Murakami's 1987 novel made him a superstar in Japan.
The route follows Watanabe across the city: his dormitory, a long Sunday walk by the moat, Naoko's apartment in Kokubunji, the campus, the streetcar to Midori's neighbourhood, a house at the edge of Kichijōji and the platform at Ueno. Murakami drew on his own student years, but the novel's dormitory and university are invented, so those two pins mark real stand-ins.
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.
In November 1274 a Mongol and Korean fleet landed on Tsushima, a mountainous Japanese island halfway to Korea, and overwhelmed its few defenders. Sucker Punch's 2020 game drops a fictional samurai, Jin Sakai, into that invasion: he survives the massacre on the beach and turns into "the Ghost", a guerrilla who breaks the samurai code to drive the invaders out.
The designers visited Tsushima twice but did not copy it one to one. This route visits the real places behind the game's opening battle, its castle and its shrines, most of them featured in the island's own guide for players. Jin, his clan and his battles are fiction; the landing, the fortress and the mountains are not.
In spring 1689 the poet Matsuo Bashō gave up his hut in Edo and set off on foot with his friend and disciple Kawai Sora into Oku, the remote north of Japan. For about 156 days and some 2,400 kilometres they walked to the places the old poets had made famous — a barrier gate, a bay of pine islands, a battlefield, a mountain temple — and Bashō answered them with haiku.
The travel diary he made of it, Oku no Hosomichi, published in 1702, is one of the classics of Japanese literature, and its stops are still pilgrimage sites. Bashō polished the facts for art; Sora's own diary shows where. Dates follow the old lunar calendar, so they are given here by season.
