The five
Shinkai draws real places more precisely than almost anyone, and unusually for a director of his scale, most of the locations are free, public and open at any hour.
| Film | Location | Cost | |---|---|---| | 5 Centimeters per Second | Iwafune Station, Tochigi | Free | | The Garden of Words | Shinjuku Gyoen | 500 yen | | Your Name | Suga Shrine steps (Tokyo) & Hida-Furukawa | Free | | Weathering With You | Asahi Inari Shrine, Ginza | Free | | Suzume | Hijiribashi (Tokyo), Kobe, Yawatahama | Free |
Do the Tokyo four in one day
Four of the five have a Tokyo location, and they are all on or near the Yamanote line.
Morning — Shinjuku Gyoen. Almost all of The Garden of Words takes place in the Japanese garden here, around the gazebo. It opens at 09:00 in summer, closes on Mondays, and costs 500 yen. Allow 90 minutes. Go in June, in the rain, if you can.
Late morning — the Suga Shrine steps. Fifteen minutes away by Marunouchi line to Yotsuya-sanchome. Free, five minutes, and the one location where behaviour matters most: it is a residential street and people use the steps to get to work.
Early afternoon — Asahi Inari Shrine, Ginza. The rooftop shrine from Weathering With You, on top of an office building, reached by lift. Ten minutes and free. The derelict building it sits on in the film, Yoyogi Kaikan, was demolished — do not go looking for it.
Late afternoon — Hijiribashi, Ochanomizu. The arched bridge on the Suzume key visual, visible from the station platform without leaving the gates. Twenty minutes.
That is four films in a single day, for 500 yen plus train fares.
The two that need a journey
Hida-Furukawa is the countryside half of Your Name, and it is the better half. Keta Wakamiya Shrine is one of the models for Miyamizu Shrine, the city library is where they search for Itomori, and the town itself — white storehouses, a canal full of carp — is worth the trip. It is on the JR Takayama line, and it pairs with Takayama, which is Hyouka.
Iwafune Station in Tochigi ends the first chapter of 5 Centimeters per Second. It is now unstaffed, the trains are infrequent, and there is nothing there. Go in winter when the fields are bare, and check the timetable both ways, because there is nowhere to wait.
Suzume is a route, not a place
Suzume travels the length of Japan, so the pilgrimage is a line rather than a point: Hijiribashi in Tokyo, the Higashiyama and Ninomiya arcades in Kobe, and Yawatahama in Ehime where she comes ashore.
One thing to know: the ferry terminal drawn in the film was the old one, and it has been demolished. For a film about closing doors on places that no longer exist, that is not the worst thing to find.
The order that works
If you have one day: the Tokyo four, in the order above.
If you have a week and are travelling west: Tokyo four, then Hida-Furukawa and Takayama, then Kobe, then Yawatahama and the ferry across to Kyushu. Iwafune only fits if you are heading north instead.
What none of them have
Signage, shops, staff, or any indication that a film happened there. Every one of these places is simply itself. That is the point, and it is why the etiquette sections on those pages are written the way they are.
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