Perfect Days: Hirayama's Tokyo

Before dawn, Hirayama wakes in an old two-storey apartment east of the Sumida, in the residential neighbourhood around Koto Tenso Jinja. He sprays the plants and shaves with the same unhurried routine every morning. Then he changes into his work clothes and loads his van with homemade cleaning tools. The Tokyo Skytree, 634 metres tall, keeps appearing on his drives and bike rides: a distant landmark of the city he crosses each day.

場所の精度: The film gives no street address; the pin marks Koto Tenso Jinja, the shrine around the corner from the building.

訪問のヒント: Koto Tenso Jinja is public; the apartment is a private building, so view it from the street.

Kengo Kuma's Walk in the Woods stands in Nabeshima Shoto Park: five cedar-clad huts beside a spring-fed pond and an old waterwheel. Hirayama finds a lost child inside a cubicle, leads him to safety, and the mother hurries to disinfect the boy's hands without a word to the cleaner. As they leave, the child turns and waves. The park is three minutes from Shinsen Station.

訪問のヒント: Three minutes on foot from Shinsen Station on the Keio Inokashira Line.

Toyo Ito's three mushroom-shaped toilets stand beside the first torii and the steps up to Yoyogi Hachimangu. Hirayama finds a tic-tac-toe grid on a scrap of paper in one stall and answers it. Over the following days an unseen stranger replies, and the game becomes a small, quiet conversation. The toilet opened in July 2021, and its three domes are meant to look like the mushrooms of the shrine forest.

訪問のヒント: At the foot of the steps to Yoyogi Hachimangu, beside the first torii.

At the top of the steps, the shrine's shaded grounds are where Hirayama eats the same lunch every day: a sandwich and milk on a bench, under the trees. He watches a woman with a calico cat, nods to an office worker who never quite nods back, and photographs the komorebi, sunlight filtering through the leaves. The shrine was founded in 1212 and sits on a wooded hill above the boulevard; several resident cats still live in the grounds.

訪問のヒント: The bench is at the top of the steps from the toilet, inside the shrine grounds.

Shigeru Ban's transparent toilet in Yoyogi Fukamachi Mini Park turns opaque when the door is locked, so anyone approaching can see whether a cubicle is free. In the film a woman asks Hirayama in English, 'How the hell does this work?' The park is also where he keeps seeing the homeless man played by dancer Min Tanaka. Ban's twin toilet, with blue and yellow walls, is a short walk away in Haru-no-Ogawa Community Park.

訪問のヒント: The transparent walls turn opaque only when the cubicle is locked.

Ebisu Park's textured concrete toilet is a small maze designed by Masamichi Katayama, with the feel of a contemporary upscale hotel. This is where Niko, Hirayama's niece, decides to help him clean. The two work together, and the day becomes a pivotal bonding moment between uncle and niece. The toilet sits in a playground on the quieter west side of Ebisu Station.

訪問のヒント: In Ebisu Park, a few minutes' walk west of Ebisu Station.

After work Hirayama cycles to Denkiyu, an old sento with a Mount Fuji mural on its white tiled wall. He soaks in the hot water, and on their last day together his niece Niko comes along to bathe there too. The bathhouse was founded in 1922 and has been in the same Showa-era building for five decades. It opens at 3pm and is still family-run, in Kyojima, Sumida.

訪問のヒント: Opens at 3pm.

Beni no Akari Novu is the small Asakusa bar with a red lantern where Mama, played by enka singer Sayuri Ishikawa, has greeted Hirayama for six years. He comes on his days off for a drink. One day he arrives early, sees her embracing a man through the doorway and leaves. The man is her ex-husband; he had not seen her for seven years, and he is dying of cancer. The venue is now a casual restaurant specialising in pork, north of Senso-ji.

場所の精度: Voyapon identifies the bar as Beni no Akari Novu; the pin marks its block on Asakusa 4-chome, not the exact unit.

訪問のヒント: North of Senso-ji; the venue now runs as a restaurant, so check its hours before visiting.

Sakurabashi is the X-shaped pedestrian bridge over the Sumida, completed in 1985 and still the river's only pedestrian-only bridge. Hirayama cycles over it between his flat and Asakusa, with the Skytree as a backdrop. On the last night he sits at the foot of the bridge with canned highballs and an unfamiliar cigarette. Mama's ex-husband finds him, and the two play shadow tag. The bridge links Sumida and Taito wards and is 169 metres long.

訪問のヒント: A pedestrian bridge linking the two banks of Sumida Park; cross it on foot.