Hosoda's Real Places: Ueda and Kamiichi

Summer Wars is set in Ueda, Nagano. Kenji, a Tokyo high-school student, is invited to Natsuki's family home, where 26 relatives gather for her great-grandmother Sakae's 90th birthday. Ueda Station appears in the film, and the Bessho Line trains that leave from it run through the story too. The film's theme song, Tatsuro Yamashita's "Bokura no Natsu no Yume", became a departure melody on the line from 30 July 2010, and in 2019 a wrapped train marked the film's tenth anniversary.

Visitor guidance: Bessho Line trains leave from Ueda Station, the usual start for a Summer Wars walk.

The Jinnouchi family house in Summer Wars is fictional, but its gate is real: the East Koguchi turret gate of Ueda Castle appears as the gate of Grandma Sakae's mansion. The family itself is modelled on the Sanada clan. That fits the castle, which Sanada Masayuki built and from which the Sanada twice repelled Tokugawa armies, in the first and second battles of Ueda.

Visitor guidance: The gate stands in the Ueda Castle Park grounds.

Wolf Children opens in Tokyo. Hana, a university student, meets a man in a classroom and falls in love; he confesses he is a descendant of the Japanese wolf. The "national university on the edge of Tokyo" is modelled on Hitotsubashi University in Kunitachi. They have two children, Yuki and Ame; after the man's death she leaves the city for his old home village.

After the wolf man's death Hana moves to his old home village, far from the city. The film's countryside draws on Toyama's hill villages, above all Kamiichi, director Hosoda's home town, and neighbouring Tateyama. The model for Hana's house is an early-Meiji farmhouse that Hosoda happened to visit in 2010 and liked. It was opened to the public in 2012 by the former owner's relatives and volunteers, and the house and storehouse were registered as cultural properties on 3 December 2024.

Location precision: The film's house is a real farmhouse in Kamiichi, but its exact address is not given in the sources; the pin marks the hill district of the town where it stands, not the building itself.

Visitor guidance: Opened to the public by a volunteer group; check current opening times before you go.

When Yuki starts primary school she makes friends, and begins to feel torn about her wild nature. The school they attend is modelled on Tanaka Elementary School in Namerikawa, Toyama. Only the north block and the gym of the old building survive, and the wooden old building is, as of 2018, the only wooden school building in Toyama Prefecture.