Why this one is easy
Most anime pilgrimages involve a train ride and a plan. This one does not. The Shibuya Incident is set in the real Shibuya, and every location worth seeing is inside or immediately outside Shibuya Station.
Nothing is themed, marked or ticketed. There is no shop, no sign, no exhibit. There is only the actual city, drawn closely enough that you recognise it standing there — which is the entire appeal.
The three locations
1. The scramble crossing
The arc opens here and keeps returning to it. It is directly outside the station Hachiko exit.
Get the overhead angle. The anime uses a raised viewpoint that you cannot match from street level. The elevated walkways around the station and the upper floors of the station buildings give you something much closer. Shooting from the pavement almost never works.
2. Shibuya Hikarie
The tower on the east side, connected directly to the station. Gojo appears on it at the start of the arc, and the circular feature on the frontage is the detail fans look for.
It is an ordinary shopping and office building — walk in, walk around, no cost.
3. The underground platforms
A large part of the arc takes place below ground, on the Tokyo Metro levels beneath Shibuya Station. The Fukutoshin line platform and the long escalators and passages connecting the levels are the settings people remember.
You need a ticket to pass the gates. If you are not travelling, buy a platform ticket rather than tapping through on a journey you will not make.
When to go
- For the anime look: evening. The crossing at night with the screens lit is closest to how it is drawn.
- For photographs without crowds: late morning to early afternoon, especially underground. Rush hour on the Metro levels is genuinely difficult to move in, let alone photograph.
The whole thing takes 45 minutes
Crossing → Hikarie → underground is a short walk, and all three are within the station complex. This is a stop you slot into a Shibuya day rather than a trip you build.
What to do with the rest of the day
You are already in Shibuya, so:
- Shibuya PARCO 6F — Nintendo TOKYO, Pokémon Center Shibuya, Capcom Store and a Jump Shop on one floor, seven minutes away. The Jump Shop is also the official channel for Jujutsu Kaisen merchandise.
- Shibuya is the densest official-store floor in Japan, so the merchandise half of the trip is solved in the same afternoon.
A note on behaviour
The crossing is one of the busiest pedestrian junctions in the world and the Metro platforms are working infrastructure carrying enormous volumes of commuters. Stand aside, do not set up tripods in the flow, and do not stop on the platform edge. Nobody minds a photograph; people mind being blocked.
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you book through them we earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.