Tokyo Your Name Audio Walking Tour (Self-Guided)

A boy in Tokyo and a girl in the mountains wake up in each other's bodies. That is the setup of Your Name, Makoto Shinkai's animated film, which opened in Japan on 26 August 2016. Taki is a Tokyo high schooler with a part-time job in an Italian restaurant. Mitsuha lives in Itomori, a small rural town. They swap lives, then the swaps stop, and Taki learns a terrible secret about her town. The question that carries the whole film is simple: will these two ever find each other? This walk follows the Tokyo half of the story through the real streets Shinkai drew, from Mitsuha's first gasp at the Shinjuku skyline to the shrine stairs of the final scene, with a stop for his earlier film, The Garden of Words, along the way. It's an unofficial fan walk, not made with or endorsed by the filmmakers or the studio. It's one of our self-guided walking tours, about 6 kilometers from Shinjuku Station's South Exit to Suga Shrine in Yotsuya. Expect spoilers.

Before you set off

Allow about an hour and a half of walking, plus time in the garden, so two to two and a half hours in all. The route is mostly flat city pavement, with a few gentle slopes and the stone stairs at the end. Stops two to four cross Shinjuku Gyoen, a national garden with an entry fee. At the time of writing adults pay 500 yen, it's closed on Mondays, and from October to mid-March the last entry is at 4 pm, so check before you go and start early in winter. If the garden is closed, the walk still works: hear stop two at the gate, skip the shelter, and follow the streets along the garden's north side to the restaurant. Shinjuku Station is huge, so start at the South Exit and give yourself a few minutes to find your footing. The last stop sits on a quiet residential street. To get home, Yotsuya-sanchome Station on the Marunouchi Line is about five minutes away, and Yotsuya Station about ten.

Shinjuku Station South Exit

You're outside Shinjuku Station's South Exit, on a busy deck over the road, with traffic below and crowds all around. Behind you stands Busta Shinjuku, the highway bus terminal, which now occupies this spot. Now look south. That tall tower with a clock near its pointed top is the NTT Docomo Yoyogi Building. Keep it in mind, because it turns up again and again in the film's views of Tokyo, and you'll see it once more from a bridge later on this walk.

This is where the Tokyo half of the story begins. Mitsuha comes from Itomori, a small rural town, and now she has woken up in the body of a Tokyo boy. Her first real look at his city is set right here. The scene where she cries out at the sight of Tokyo takes place on the footbridge just outside this exit. Think about what she's seeing: the towers, the traffic, the endless crowd, all at once, through someone else's eyes. You're standing in the same rush of people, so you can feel a little of it yourself.

It's a funny moment, but it's also the start of everything. From now on the two of them keep trading places. Mitsuha has to live Taki's Tokyo life, and Taki has to live hers in Itomori, neither of them sure how or why it keeps happening.

Taki's world is the one you're walking through today. His job waiting tables is just a few minutes from here, beside a famous garden. But first, that garden holds a story Shinkai told three years before this one. Head east, away from the station, toward Shinjuku Gyoen's Shinjuku Gate. About eleven minutes.

Shinjuku Gyoen, Shinjuku Gate

You're at the Shinjuku Gate, the main western entrance to Shinjuku Gyoen. Beyond the ticket gates lies a garden, right in the middle of one of the busiest districts in Tokyo. This is a national garden, run by the Ministry of the Environment.

The garden has a long royal past. The land passed to the Imperial Household in 1879, and between 1902 and 1906 it was rebuilt as an imperial garden. Then came the war. Most of it was destroyed in the air raids of 1945. On 21 May 1949, it opened to the public as a national garden, and it has been a place for ordinary people ever since.

Now for the detour. In 2013, three years before Your Name, Makoto Shinkai released a short film called The Garden of Words. It runs just 46 minutes. Its hero is Takao, a 15-year-old boy who dreams of becoming a shoemaker. On rainy mornings he skips school and comes to a garden, and there he keeps meeting Yukari, a woman of 27. A schoolboy and an adult, strangers, sharing a garden on wet mornings when both should be somewhere else. Shinkai modelled the film's garden on this one, Shinjuku Gyoen.

Remember that title, The Garden of Words. It will turn up again in Taki's story, hidden in an Italian name.

A few garden rules before you go in. Alcohol is banned inside, and so are smoking, drones and playing music. That first rule will make you smile at the next stop.

Head through the gate and follow the paths south and a little east to the Japanese garden, to the small wooden shelter beside the pond, next to the Taiwan Pavilion. About seven minutes. If the garden is closed today, skip the next stop and walk along the streets on the garden's north side to the restaurant instead.

The Garden of Words Shelter

You're beside the pond in the Japanese garden, at a small wooden shelter. Fans of The Garden of Words come to this spot because it looks like the one where Takao and Yukari sit out the rain. This is the shelter fans link to the film. Nobody involved has officially confirmed it as the exact one, but stand under the roof, look out at the water, and you'll see why people make the connection.

In the film, the two keep meeting in the garden on rainy mornings, sheltering from the weather side by side. And Yukari has a habit that sticks in every viewer's mind: she drinks beer with chocolate. Beer, on a school morning, in a public garden. Here's the real-life twist. If you tried to copy her today, you'd be breaking the rules, because alcohol isn't allowed in this garden. Fans can sit where she sat, but the beer stays in the film.

Now look at the building next to the shelter. That's the Kyu-Goryotei, often called the Taiwan Pavilion. It was built in 1927 with money raised by Japanese residents of Taiwan, and it was given to the imperial family. When the bombs fell on this garden in 1945, it was one of only two structures that survived. So while the shelter is a place from a film, the pavilion beside it is a real survivor of the war.

When Shinkai came to tell Taki's story three years later, he gave a quiet nod back to this film, and you'll find it just outside the garden walls. Leave the garden by the Okido Gate on its eastern side, then follow the path along the garden's northern edge to the Cosmo Shinjuku Gyoen Building. About eleven minutes.