Tokyo Lost in Translation Audio Walking Tour (Self-Guided)

Two Americans who can't sleep, in a city that never seems to. That's the heart of Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola's 2003 film. Bob Harris is a fading movie star who has flown to Tokyo to shoot whisky ads. Charlotte is a young philosophy graduate from Yale, stuck in the same Shinjuku hotel while her photographer husband works. Both are jet-lagged and adrift, and they keep running into each other in the hotel bar. Over a few days, an unlikely friendship forms, and the film ends with a whisper nobody else gets to hear. This walk follows their story in order, through the real places it was filmed: Charlotte's Shibuya, the karaoke night, a tense lunch, the hotel at the center of it all, the back street of the goodbye, and finally the neon where the film begins. It's an unofficial film walk, not made with or endorsed by the filmmakers or the studio. It's one of our self-guided walking tours, about 5.7 kilometers from Shibuya Crossing to Yasukuni-dori in Kabukicho. Spoilers ahead.

Before you set off

Allow about an hour and a half of walking, and two hours or more with stops. One leg is a long walk: about 40 minutes on foot from Shibuya north through Yoyogi to the Park Hyatt, with nothing from the film along the way. The narration fills that stretch with the story of how the film was made. If you'd rather not walk it, take a short train ride from Shibuya to Shinjuku and walk to the hotel's tower from there. The route is city pavement and mostly flat. A late-afternoon start is ideal, so you reach the Kabukicho neon after dark. Two practical notes. The karaoke branch is still open, but nobody can promise you the rooms used in the film. And the shabu-shabu restaurant opens at five in the evening, so it's a street-front stop. Hours change, so check before you go. Kabukicho is a nightlife district: stick to the main road and ignore the touts. The walk ends near JR Shinjuku Station's East Exit and Seibu-Shinjuku Station.

Shibuya Crossing

You're at Shibuya Crossing, the famous scramble, where the traffic stops and the crowds pour across from every side at once. Wait for one change of the lights and watch it happen.

This is Charlotte's Tokyo. Her husband is off working, and she has long days to fill in a city that isn't hers. So she wanders. The film keeps bringing her and Bob back through this crossing, a small figure in a huge moving crowd, which is exactly how it feels to be new here. If you've ever arrived somewhere jet-lagged and a little lost, this is the scene that speaks to you.

Now look up at the buildings around the crossing. Some of the film's views of this crowd were shot from above, and there's a good story behind them. Coppola later said her crew simply walked into a Starbucks overlooking this crossing because it had an incredible view, and that they would never have got permission to film there. So they didn't ask. According to the story, they paid for their coffee. That's the spirit of this film's whole shoot: small, quick and quiet, slipping real Tokyo into the frame. We'll come back to how they pulled it off on the long walk later.

What's coming next is the night the film turns. Charlotte's husband has left town for work, and she invites Bob to come out with her and her Tokyo friends. It's a long night out, and it ends with a microphone. Cross toward the north-west side of the crossing and head up into the streets of Udagawacho, to the Karaoke Kan building at 30-8 Udagawacho. About seven minutes.

Karaoke Kan, Udagawacho

You're outside Karaoke Kan in Udagawacho, a karaoke chain's Shibuya store. It's still operating, and it stays open late into the night. One detail matters here: the same chain has another branch nearby, its main Shibuya store, and that one is not where the film was shot. This one is.

The big night out ends here, with karaoke. The film's karaoke scenes were shot in two rooms of this branch, rooms 601 and 602. After days of chance meetings in a hotel bar, this is the first time Bob and Charlotte share a whole night out in the city together, with her friends, the songs and the small rooms. From here on, they're really friends.

Can you sing in those rooms today? Nobody can promise it. One account says the rooms used in the film were in an annex that has since closed, but that's a single source, so treat it as a maybe. If you want to go in and book a room, you'll still be singing in the right building, and that's a fine way to honor the scene.

After the karaoke, the friendship deepens over the next days. Then it goes sour. Bob sleeps with the jazz singer from the hotel bar. What follows is a very awkward meal. Continue north-west, out of the busiest streets, into Kamiyamacho, to the Shibuya Creston Hotel. About six minutes.

Shabu Zen, Shibuya Creston Hotel

You're outside the Shibuya Creston Hotel in Kamiyamacho. Down in the basement is Shabu Zen, a shabu-shabu restaurant, where you cook thin slices of meat at the table in a pot of simmering broth. In the film it's lunch. In real life the restaurant opens at five in the evening and isn't open at lunchtime, so for most of us this is a look from the street.

This is the scene of the tense meal. After Bob's night with the singer, he and Charlotte sit down to shabu-shabu, and the warmth between them has gone cold. It's a tense, uncomfortable meal, funny and painful at once, the way a falling-out with a friend can be. You don't have to have seen the film to know the feeling.

They do make up, on Bob's last night. And the place that holds the rest of their story is the hotel, which is where we're headed next. It's a long way from here.

Here's where the long walk begins. Head north from Kamiyamacho through the quiet residential streets of Yoyogi toward the towers of Nishi-Shinjuku, which you'll see rising ahead of you. The Park Hyatt sits at the top of one of those towers. It's about 40 minutes on foot. While you walk, here's the story of how this film got made.

Sofia Coppola knew this city. She has said she spent a lot of time in Tokyo in her twenties, and you can feel that personal connection in the way the film looks at the city. But the whole project depended on one actor. She said plainly that she wasn't going to make the movie unless Bill Murray played Bob. And Murray kept everyone waiting. He never signed a formal contract, and his part wasn't confirmed until the week before shooting began. Picture that: a crew, a city, a schedule, and the star still unconfirmed with a week to go.

Then there was Charlotte. Scarlett Johansson was cast at just 17, to play a 22-year-old. Shooting began on 29 September 2002 and lasted only 27 days. Keep walking north.