Every country has fans who visit filming locations. Japan took it further than anywhere else — an organized national culture with its own name, its own official list of sacred sites, and train companies that repaint entire trains for it.
The name is seichi junrei — literally "sacred-site pilgrimage," the same words used for religious journeys, borrowed by anime fans with a wink that became sincere. How sincere? When Japan's tourism and anime industries created an official program in 2016, it went on to select exactly 88 anime locations — a deliberate homage to the 88 temples of the Shikoku Buddhist pilgrimage. This article is your grounding in how the whole system works, the etiquette that keeps it welcome, and the easiest places to try it from Tokyo.
The Shrine Where It All Started
The culture's origin story has a date and an address: 2007, Washinomiya Shrine, Saitama. The anime Lucky Star opened each episode with a shot of the shrine's torii gate, fans traced it within months, and a quiet town suddenly had a phenomenon. New Year shrine visits, around 130,000 people before the show, surged past 400,000 within two years.
What made Washinomiya the template wasn't the crowds — it was the town's answer. Local shops worked with the publisher to sell character goods (one strap series alone moved 35,000 units, about ¥220 million, across some 60 local stores, per an academic study of the case). The town registered the anime's characters as honorary "special residents," drawing 2,760 visitors on day one. Fans built a Lucky Star mikoshi — a portable festival shrine — and have carried it in the local festival alongside residents since 2008, a tradition now passed to a younger generation of fans.
Washinomiya is also credited as the birthplace of ita-ema: votive prayer plaques painted with anime characters, hung at the shrine alongside everyone else's wishes. Walk any pilgrimage shrine today and you'll see walls of them — fan art as offering.
One honest footnote: even the original sacred site has felt strain. After the shrine's wooden torii collapsed in 2018, notices went up banning cosplay photography on the grounds. The lesson threads through this whole culture — the welcome is real, and it's conditional.
Yes, There's an Official List of 88
In 2016, KADOKAWA — one of Japan's biggest anime publishers — led the founding of the Anime Tourism Association, together with members from the travel industry. Its flagship program selects the "Anime Spot 88": a fan web vote from around the world, then consultation with rights holders and local governments (both must consent), then a final board decision. The first chairman was Yoshiyuki Tomino, creator of Gundam; Macross designer Shoji Kawamori took over in 2024.
The number 88 is the tell for how seriously Japan takes the "pilgrimage" framing — it mirrors the 88 temples of the centuries-old Shikoku circuit. There's even an official stamp program for collecting visits, pilgrimage-book style.
For you, the list at animetourism88.com works as a vetted starting menu: every site on it has already said, officially, "fans are welcome here."
When a Whole Town Plays Along
Here's the layer no general travel guide explains: in Japan, the town often participates in the fiction. Railways repaint entire trains in a show's artwork — Izuhakone Railway has run full-wrap Love Live! Sunshine!! trains since 2017, with two wrapped trains currently running, with a one-day collab pass that doubles as a stamp-rally entry. Chichibu Railway runs a fully wrapped train for the Anohana trilogy; collect three station stamps and you trade them for a poster, with a ¥1,200 commemorative ticket for collectors.
Stamp rallies, collab tickets, character panels at temples, official location maps handed out free at tourist offices — this is standard municipal machinery now. It means an anime pilgrimage in Japan isn't a solitary scavenger hunt; it's a designed experience the locals built with you in mind, funded partly by the goods and tickets you buy along the way.
The Manners Section (Read This One)
The reason etiquette dominates every Japanese discussion of seichi junrei is that the failure case is real and recent. The Slam Dunk railroad crossing in Kamakura — one of the most famous anime shots on earth — drew 70 to 100 visitors at a time after the 2022 film, some stepping into the road and even the tracks for photos. Police complaints nearly tripled in a year, from 18 in 2022 to 47 by mid-2023, and the city now stations guards there. One resident's quote to a Japanese magazine says it all: "Please understand that real people live here."
The code, consistent across every Japanese guide:
- AvoidPhotographing into homes, gardens or private property
Many locations are ordinary residential streets. If a shot would capture someone's window or yard, it's not a shot.
- AvoidStepping into roads or rail crossings for the angle
The famous crossings are live infrastructure. Guards at Kamakura exist because people kept doing exactly this.
- AvoidTreating a quiet neighborhood like a convention
Keep voices down, don't block sidewalks, take every piece of trash home — there are rarely public bins.
- AvoidIgnoring posted signs because they're in Japanese
Busy sites like Kamakura's crossing now post multilingual manner signs. Where they exist, they're the house rules, not suggestions.
The flip side is that fans have a positive playbook too: hang an ita-ema, buy the local collab goods, ride the wrapped train, join the festival if invited. K-On! fans famously donated musical instruments to the school building that inspired the show. That's the exchange that keeps these towns saying yes.
Finding the Actual Spots
Three layers, from official to fan-made. First, town tourism offices: many print free location maps — in Chichibu, pick up the Anohana map at the information center in front of Seibu-Chichibu Station. Second, the official 88 list for vetted sites. Third, the map apps: fan-built AniTabi covers 300+ shows and 1,500+ pinned locations in five languages, and the officially licensed Butai Meguri adds GPS check-ins for 200+ works.
Between those, most of a show's real-world "set" can be mapped from your couch before you ever book a flight.
Where to Start From Tokyo
Three day-trips, in rough order of ease:
- 01Kamakura — Slam Dunk (about 1 to 1.5 hours)
Train to Kamakura, then the little Enoden line to Kamakurakokomae Station; the famous crossing is a minute's walk. Go early, obey the guards, and enjoy the sea view that made the shot iconic.
- 02Chichibu — Anohana (about 80 minutes from Ikebukuro)
The Laview limited express runs Ikebukuro to Seibu-Chichibu for about ¥1,700. Grab the free location map at the station-front tourist office, then walk the Old Chichibu Bridge and Jorin-ji temple, where character ema hang beside traditional ones.
- 03Numazu — Love Live! Sunshine!! (shinkansen to Mishima, then one stop)
The city's official tourism site publishes a model route — a rare case of a municipal government maintaining your fan itinerary for you. Note the locations split between the station area and the Uchiura coast, which needs a bus.
Washinomiya Shrine itself — the origin point — is also an easy half-day on the Tobu line, about eight minutes' walk from Washinomiya Station, with the mikoshi and shopping-street goods culture still visible.
If your trip leans further west, anime Japan follows you: Ghibli Park sits directly on the Golden Route at Nagoya, and the one-way Tokyo-to-Osaka itinerary passes within reach of several 88-list sites. We'll be covering individual shows' pilgrimages — from Haikyuu's little hometown in Iwate to Oshi no Ko's shrine in Kyushu — in dedicated guides that build on this one.
Seichi junrei works because both sides keep a bargain: towns build the welcome, fans honor the rules. Learn the code once, and all 88 doors — plus hundreds of unofficial ones — are open.