Anime in Aichi

The Meitetsu Tokoname Line station is the gateway to the pottery footpath. Its ticket gates appear in the film when Hinode and Tarō (Muge in cat form) search for the missing Muge.

The most iconic slope on the pottery footpath (Yakimono Sanpo-michi), its walls lined with Meiji-era clay pipes and early-Shōwa shōchū bottles. In the film, as Tarō heads home from Hinode's house, the mask seller appears here to tempt him to stay a cat for good.

The approach path (sandō) to this shrine appears at the start of the film: it is where Muge meets the mask seller and gets the mask that turns her into a cat.

A 1921 bridge linking Sakae-machi and Tōgō-chō over a sunken road, overlooking the pottery town. Tarō crosses it on the way back from Hinode's house, and the Y-junction just west of it is Muge's daily route to school, where she parts from Yoriko.

A climbing kiln built around 1887 and used until 1974, one of the largest surviving in Japan. It appears as Hinode searches for the missing Muge. In the square next to it, on the rainy festival day, Tarō and Hinode shelter together — a key memory in the film.

The wall of the Takita family house — cargo-ship owners from the Edo to the Meiji period — appears as Tarō walks along recalling Hinode's words. The restored house is open as a museum.

The studio of ceramic sculptor Shibayama Seifū, a leading Shōwa-era Tokoname artist and great-grandfather of co-director Tomotaka Shibayama. It was the model for the Hinode family's home and workshop. It is now open to the public.

A park with a pond in the Asukadai residential area, 1.2 km east of the station and away from the pottery footpath. It is where Kinako — the cat now living in Muge's body — and Tarō have their talk.

A huge maneki-neko head (3.8 m tall, 6.3 m wide) peeking over the wall of the cat street on the way to the pottery footpath; it can even be seen from the station platform. It is not among the film's official settings, but it is the town's cat symbol and a regular stop for fans.

The bookstore near the station is location ① on the official pilgrimage map.

The library in emCAMPUS EAST is location ⑨ on the official map.

The city where Jiro works as an engineer for the aviation company (Mitsubishi) and witnesses a bank run of the era. The setting of the story's professional heart.

The newest area of Ghibli Park (opened 2024), gathering the worlds of Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle and Earwig and the Witch. It includes a recreation of Kiki's home (the Okino house) and the Gütiokipänja Bakery, plus Howl's Moving Castle.

An open-air museum of Meiji- and Taishō-era buildings in Inuyama. Fans come for a steam locomotive said to resemble the Mugen Train and a building that looks like the Butterfly Mansion. It does not appear in the work and has no official link to it: it is a place fans associate with Demon Slayer.

An outdoor area of Ghibli Park inspired by the Tatara (Irontown) village of Princess Mononoke, with a huge sculpture of the boar god Okkoto and the Tatarigami you can walk through, and a charcoal-hut rest area serving gohei-mochi. It evokes the film's ironworking village.

The Grand Warehouse, the large covered pavilion of Ghibli Park (Nagakute, Aichi, opened 2022), gathers film sets and exhibits, with a full-scale recreation of scenes from Spirited Away, such as the food stall where Chihiro's parents transform. It is not a scene from the film (a fictional spirit world) but the largest official recreation you can visit.

A full-scale reconstruction of the Kusakabe family home, built for Expo 2005 in Aichi and now part of the 'Dondoko Forest' area of Ghibli Park in Nagakute. Every room — kitchen, bath, the father's study, drawers that really open — reproduces the film's house in obsessive detail, down to everyday 1950s objects. It is the most faithful official recreation of Totoro's world.

The former Kabuto Beer factory in Handa (Aichi) is the model for the Auto Memory Doll training school Violet attends in episode 3.