Departures (Okuribito): Filming Locations in Yamagata

Cellist Daigo Kobayashi loses his job when his orchestra is disbanded, and he and his wife Mika move into his childhood home in his Yamagata hometown, fronted by the coffee shop his father once ran. In the film it is the café called Concerto, shot in a former beauty salon in Kaminoyama that director Takita picked from a hundred candidates for its atmosphere as an aged building. Since 2009 it has been open to the public as the Kaminoyama Concerto Museum.

場所の精度: The pin marks the centre of Kaminoyama, not the museum itself, which map data did not locate.

訪問のヒント: The building is open to the public as the Kaminoyama Concerto Museum; check opening times locally.

Daigo answers a job ad for "assisting departures", assuming it is a travel agency. At the NK Agent office he learns the work is preparing the dead for cremation, and he is hired on the spot with a cash advance from his new boss, Sasaki. The film shot this scene in a three-storey, Western-style building in Sakata, built in 1922 as a restaurant called Kappō Obata, which went out of business in 1998. It was closed to visitors at the end of March 2014.

場所の精度: The pin marks the centre of Sakata; the former Kappō Obata building could not be located on the map data.

After his first assignment leaves him beset with nausea, Daigo visits a public bath he went to as a child, owned by Tsuyako Yamashita, the mother of a former classmate. Later in the film he prepares her body in front of the Yamashita family and Mika. The bath on screen was Tsuru-no-yu in Tsuruoka. It closed on 1 September 2009, and in April 2010 the building was moved to the open set of the Shonai Movie Village.

場所の精度: The original bath stood in Tsuruoka but has been moved; the pin marks the centre of Tsuruoka.

Mika finds a training DVD in which Daigo plays a corpse, and she leaves him to return to her parents' home in Tokyo. The DVD shoot scene was filmed in the Sakata Minato-za, described as Yamagata's first movie theatre, which had been closed since 2002. The film's attention brought it back: it reopened on 12 June 2009 and has been opened to tourists, with film screenings and events.

訪問のヒント: The cinema has reopened to visitors; check its schedule for screenings and events.

After discovering the training DVD, Mika leaves Daigo to return to her parents' home in Tokyo, and the scene of her going home was shot at Amarume Station. Amarume is one of the listed filming locations, with Kaminoyama, Sakata, Tsuruoka and Yuza.