Persona 5: The Phantom Thieves' Tokyo

Joker's year starts here. Framed for assault, the player-named student is put on probation, relocates to the fictional neighbourhood Yongen-Jaya and transfers to Shujin Academy; the game opens on 9 April 20XX and spans roughly a year. Sojiro Sakura owns Café Leblanc in Yongen-Jaya and is Ren's guardian for the length of that probation. Sangenjaya is the real basis for that district, just outside Shibuya: a Setagaya neighbourhood packed with bars, cafés and restaurants that keeps its retro charm around the Eko Nakamise shopping street and Suzuran Street by the station. Leblanc itself is invented, so what you can walk is the station and those two old shopping streets.

Location precision: Café Leblanc and Yongen-Jaya are invented; the pin marks Sangen-jaya Station, the station the neighbourhood's streets cluster around.

Visitor guidance: Sangen-jaya Station is a Tokyu stop, with Suzuran Street and the Eko Nakamise shopping street beside it.

Shibuya is where the Thieves buy their hardware. Munehisa Iwai, a former yakuza, keeps Untouchable, an airsoft shop in Shibuya; because fake guns and weapons are as effective as the real thing in the Metaverse, Joker frequently visits to supply the team. Shibuya is also mob boss Junya Kaneshiro's patch — he enlists Shujin Academy students to smuggle drugs there — so the district carries the mob strand of the story as well as the shopping. The pin stands at the scramble crossing by Shibuya Station, described as the world's busiest pedestrian crossing, with as many as 3,000 people crossing during a single green light cycle.

Location precision: The game places Untouchable and Kaneshiro's operation only "in Shibuya"; the pin marks the scramble crossing outside Shibuya Station.

Visitor guidance: The scramble crossing sits directly outside Shibuya Station, at the heart of the district the game uses.

Shinjuku is the game's nightlife district, and a second kind of crime runs here. The reporter Ichiko Ohya frequents the Crossroads Bar, where she is friends with the drag queen bartender Lala Escargot. Chihaya Mifune, a fortune-teller from the countryside with a stand in Shinjuku; Shinjuku is also where Tsukasa has manipulated girls into working for illegal businesses. The real stand-in is Kabukichō, the red-light district with a high concentration of hostess clubs, love hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, whose Golden Gai is famous for its plethora of small bars.

Location precision: The Crossroads Bar and Mifune's stand are game places somewhere in Shinjuku; the pin marks Kabukichō, the district of bars the game drinks in.

Visitor guidance: Kabukichō lies beside Shinjuku Station, and Golden Gai's small bars are inside it.

Akihabara belongs to a schoolboy. Shinya Oda — the King, as they call him — hangs out at the Gigolo Arcade, holding the top score on the shoot 'em up Gun About. He idolises the Phantom Thieves, and Joker asks him for his help in defeating a cheating gamer in Mementos; Oda also teaches Joker gun moves in Gun About, which Joker uses in the Metaverse. The pin stands at Akihabara Station, an interchange at the centre of a district with anime and manga icons on its shopfronts, maid cafés and large arcades, its main shopping street lying just west of the station.

Location precision: The Gigolo Arcade is a game place somewhere in Akihabara; the pin marks Akihabara Station at the centre of the district.

Visitor guidance: The district's main area is the street just west of Akihabara Station, where the large arcades are concentrated.

The last stop belongs to Persona 5 Royal. At the beginning of the following year Joker finds reality distorted: wishes granted, the dead brought back to life. Kasumi awakens to her Persona after discovering a new Palace in Odaiba with him, and with Akechi he finds Maruki is its owner. That palace takes the form of a research facility on the Odaiba site where Maruki's lab was to be built before his funding was cut. Odaiba is an artificial island in Tokyo Bay reached across the Rainbow Bridge, so the pin marks the bridge rather than a building that exists.

Location precision: Maruki's palace exists only in the game and its Odaiba site is never named; the pin marks the Rainbow Bridge at the island's waterfront.

Visitor guidance: The Rainbow Bridge crosses northern Tokyo Bay between Shibaura Pier and the Odaiba waterfront.