How to Visit an Anime Pilgrimage Site (Seichi Junrei) Without Being Rude
By Yoshi | Japan Unveiled
There is a small town in Saitama Prefecture called Washinomiya that, in 2008, experienced something its residents had not anticipated and could not initially explain.
Tourists began arriving. Not many at first — a handful, then dozens, then hundreds. They came with cameras. They stood in front of the local Washinomiya Shrine and took photographs from specific angles. They walked the streets of the town with the focused attention of people following a map that existed only in their heads. They bought things — local food, shrine charms, items with specific imagery that the shopkeepers did not immediately recognize.
What the shopkeepers eventually discovered was that their town had appeared in Lucky Star — a popular slice-of-life anime series — as the setting for the story. The shrine that was a normal part of the town’s daily life had become, in the anime, the home shrine of the protagonist’s family. Fans of the series were visiting to experience the place where their favorite story was set. To stand where the characters stood. To see, with their own eyes, the real version of the world they had been watching on their screens.
The phenomenon they were participating in had a name: seichi junrei — sacred site pilgrimage. And it would grow, over the following decade and a half, into one of the most significant forms of domestic tourism in Japan.
This article is about how to do it correctly.
What Seichi Junrei Is
Seichi junrei (聖地巡礼) — the characters mean “sacred place” and “pilgrimage” — is the practice of visiting real-world locations that appear in or inspired anime, manga, or other works of Japanese popular culture.
The term borrows deliberately from religious pilgrimage — the traditional practice of traveling to sacred sites associated with specific deities or teachings. The borrowing is partly ironic and partly sincere. The fan who travels from Tokyo to a small rural town specifically to photograph a particular bridge that appeared in a specific episode of a specific anime is not, in the religious sense, making a pilgrimage. But the motivation — the desire to be physically present in a place that carries significance, to experience the relationship between a represented place and the real place it represents — has a structural similarity to religious pilgrimage that the borrowed vocabulary acknowledges.
The practice has existed as long as anime has used real locations as setting material. What changed in the 2000s — and particularly with the Washinomiya phenomenon associated with Lucky Star — was the scale and the self-consciousness. Fans began to understand themselves as participants in a recognized practice. The word seichi junrei became common currency. Guidebooks, websites, databases, and apps were developed to catalog the real-world locations associated with specific works. The practice formalized.
Why Locations Matter in Anime
To understand why fans travel to these locations, you need to understand why anime uses real locations in the first place.
Most anime is not set in a completely invented world. Even anime with fantastical elements — magic systems, superpowers, alternate history — typically ground their visual world in real Japanese locations. The specific architecture of Kyoto, the distinctive silhouette of a regional train, the exact dimensions of a particular park — these details are incorporated into the visual design of anime in ways that make the world feel inhabited rather than invented.
The studios that produce anime have economic reasons for this: it is cheaper to reference real photographs and architectural documents than to invent entirely original environments. But the effect on viewers goes beyond economics. The real-world grounding of the visual world creates a specific quality of authenticity — the sense that the story is happening somewhere, rather than nowhere. The world feels like it could be entered.
Your Name, the 2016 film by Makoto Shinkai, is the most internationally famous example of this practice in recent anime. The Tokyo sequences are drawn with such photographic precision that viewers have identified the specific intersections, specific cafés, specific viewpoints that appear in the film. The success of Your Name produced a wave of location tourism to these sites that has been sustained for years. The specific Suga Shrine staircase that appears in the film’s climax has become one of the most photographed spots in Tokyo.
Shinkai has spoken about his deliberate approach to location — the practice of photographing specific locations extensively before incorporating them into his visual design, and the specific emotional quality that real-world accuracy brings to animated spaces. The viewer who has walked past a specific Tokyo intersection and then sees it in the film experiences something specific: the film’s world and their world are the same world. The story is happening in a place they know.
This is the mechanism that produces seichi junrei. The fan who travels to a location associated with a beloved anime is traveling to the place where the story is real — where the overlap between fiction and the actual world is most directly visible.
The Scale: How Large This Has Become
The economic impact of seichi junrei on local communities has been substantial enough to attract the attention of regional governments, tourism boards, and economic researchers.
Washinomiya saw a tenfold increase in visitors to its shrine following the Lucky Star association — from approximately 9,000 shrine visitors in 2007 to approximately 300,000 in 2008. The local economy benefited from food sales, accommodation, transportation, and merchandise in amounts that were transformative for a small community.
Non Non Biyori — a slice-of-life anime set in a fictional rural community modeled closely on the Asahi district of Moka City in Tochigi Prefecture — brought visitors to a community that had few other reasons to attract tourism, and the local response to those visitors became itself a model of thoughtful tourism management.
Ano Hi Mita Hana (Anohana) — set in Chichibu City, Saitama — produced visitor flows that the city acknowledged officially, producing local merchandise and eventually designating the key locations from the anime as official points of interest.
The Japan Tourism Agency has recognized seichi junrei as a significant component of domestic tourism and has developed guidance for local governments on how to welcome and manage anime-related visitors. The practice is, in economic terms, a genuine and growing industry.
The Etiquette Problem: Why This Article Is Necessary
Here is the difficult part of the seichi junrei conversation.
The locations associated with anime pilgrimage are, in most cases, real places where real people live and work. The Washinomiya Shrine is an active religious institution with regular worshippers. The residential street in Nerima that appeared in a specific anime is a residential street where people live. The convenience store in a provincial city that appeared in the background of a specific scene is a convenience store that serves the local community.
The arrival of fans — sometimes in large numbers, sometimes with behavior that prioritizes the photographic documentation of the visit over the ordinary courtesy expected in public spaces — has created genuine friction in multiple locations. Residents have complained about noise, about crowds, about fans entering private property to achieve specific angles, about the general transformation of their ordinary neighborhood into a tourist site.
Several locations have explicitly requested that fans not visit. Property owners have put up signs asking visitors to stay away. Local governments have had to mediate between fan communities and local residents who did not choose to have their community become a pilgrimage site.
This friction is the reason that the question of how to visit a seichi junrei correctly is worth addressing seriously. The practice is legitimate. The behavior that sometimes accompanies it is not.
The Rules: How to Visit Correctly
These are not official regulations. They are the distilled understanding of what respectful seichi junrei practice looks like — derived from the published guidelines of fan communities, from the requests of local governments and property owners, and from the straightforward application of ordinary courtesy to a specific context.
Research Before You Go
The first rule of respectful pilgrimage is knowing where you are going and what to expect. This means checking whether the location is on public or private property, whether the local community has expressed preferences about visitor behavior, whether there are specific times when visits are inappropriate (religious ceremonies, local events, early morning in residential areas), and whether any official requests have been made about photography or access.
Several databases and websites — including the fan-maintained Anime Tourism database and the Japan Tourism Agency’s official anime tourism portal — provide location information alongside notes about local conditions. Reading these notes before visiting is not optional. It is the minimum preparation for being a respectful visitor.
Do Not Trespass
This rule should not need to be stated, but the evidence of fan behavior at certain locations suggests that it does.
If the location you want to visit is on private property — a private residence, a business exterior that requires entering private grounds, a farm or rural property — you do not enter without permission. The fact that the location appeared in an anime does not grant access. The fact that other fans have previously accessed the location without apparent consequence does not grant access. The fact that getting the specific photograph requires standing at a specific angle on private property does not grant access.
The fan communities that have handled this most gracefully are those that have proactively sought permission — contacting property owners in advance, explaining the context, asking whether a brief visit would be acceptable. Many property owners, approached with courtesy and given the choice, will say yes. The choice must be given.
Be Quiet in Residential Areas
Early morning photography — the light is often best early, and some fans seek to recreate specific scenes that are set at dawn — in residential areas requires a specific level of consideration that not all visitors bring.
Residential streets in Japan are quiet. They are quiet because the residents value the quiet and because Japanese urban residential culture is organized around not disturbing neighbors. A group of fans arriving at six in the morning to photograph a specific street, speaking at normal volume and arranging themselves for photographs, is an intrusion into that quiet that the residents did not choose and cannot easily escape.
Visit residential areas at reasonable hours. Speak quietly. Move through rather than occupying. Do not block streets or prevent the movement of residents going about their ordinary lives.
Do Not Photograph Private Individuals Without Consent
The people who live in and around seichi junrei locations have not consented to appear in fan documentation of those locations. Photographs that incidentally include people going about their lives — the woman walking her dog, the shopkeeper in the doorway — are not, strictly speaking, problematic if the people are not the subject and are not identifiable. Photographs in which private individuals are clearly the subject, or in which they are placed in uncomfortable situations by the photographer’s presence, are not acceptable.
This is standard courtesy. It applies more acutely in locations where the residents are already dealing with increased visitor traffic and where a specific photograph of a specific person could, if posted online, identify the location and contribute to additional visitor pressure.
Purchase Something From Local Businesses
The seichi junrei economy is real, and participating in it honestly means contributing to it. The local restaurants, the convenience stores, the small shops that happen to be located near pilgrimage sites — visiting these places and spending money there is both practically appropriate and socially correct.
It demonstrates that the visit has value beyond the photographs. It acknowledges the local economy that is hosting you. It is the difference between visiting a place as a consumer of its imagery and visiting it as a genuine participant in its community, however briefly.
Many local communities that have embraced seichi junrei have developed specific products — food items, merchandise, local specialties — connected to the associated anime. Purchasing these items is a direct participation in the most positive version of what seichi junrei can be: a relationship between fan communities and local communities that is genuinely mutually beneficial.
Do Not Recreate Scenes in Ways That Inconvenience Others
One of the more specific problems at popular seichi junrei locations is the recreation of specific scenes — poses, arrangements, precise angles — that require extended occupation of public space. The fan who needs forty-five minutes and six attempts to achieve the exact framing of a specific scene, while standing in the middle of a pedestrian crossing or blocking the entrance to a shrine, is prioritizing their documentation over the ordinary function of the public space.
Be efficient. Have a clear idea of what you want before you arrive. Achieve it without extended occupation. Move on.
The pedestrian crossing in Shibuya that appears in multiple anime and has become a general seichi junrei destination for that reason — fans who stand in the middle of the crossing for extended periods create specific safety and traffic problems that the crossing’s ordinary users did not sign up for. The crossing exists to let people cross the street. It is available to be photographed while you are crossing. It is not available as a photography set.
Follow Shrine and Temple Rules
Many seichi junrei locations are at or near Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples — spaces of genuine religious significance that have specific behavioral expectations.
Proper behavior at shrines and temples: wash hands at the temizuya before approaching the main hall. Do not treat the shrine as a photography set to the exclusion of its function as a sacred space. If you are visiting during a religious ceremony or event, observe the ceremony with the respect you would extend to any religious observance. Do not place offerings of anime merchandise at shrine altars — this is not appropriate and has been specifically discouraged at several locations.
Some locations actively welcome the association between the shrine and the anime — the Chichibu Shrine associated with Anohana has developed merchandise that incorporates both the shrine’s own iconography and elements of the anime, and the local community has chosen to embrace the connection. In these cases, the shrine’s own approach to the association guides appropriate visitor behavior. In cases where the shrine has made no such acknowledgment, treat the association as your own interest rather than as something the shrine endorses.
The Best Seichi Junrei Experiences in Japan
With the etiquette established, let me tell you about some of the most rewarding pilgrimage locations in Japan — places where the relationship between the fiction and the real is particularly clear and where the communities have, in most cases, developed thoughtful approaches to welcoming visitors.
Chichibu City, Saitama — associated with Anohana and Ano Hi Mita Hana. The rural mountain city setting, the specific quality of the landscape, the railway connections — all of it is rendered in the anime with affection and accuracy. The city has embraced the connection, producing official maps of key locations and maintaining a welcoming attitude toward visitors. The Chichibu railway line, the Chichibu Shrine, the Akagi River — all are present in the anime and in the city, and moving between the two is one of the most complete seichi junrei experiences available.
Ōarai Town, Ibaraki — associated with Girls und Panzer, an anime in which the girls of a high school compete in tank warfare tournaments. The town, a coastal community on the Pacific, appears extensively in the anime and has responded to fan interest with an enthusiasm that has made Ōarai one of the most visitor-friendly seichi junrei communities in Japan. The local shopping street has produced merchandise, the local food establishments serve themed items, and the community’s embrace of the connection is genuine and sustained.
Toyosato, Shiga — the elementary school in Toyosato that appears in K-On! as the setting for the light music club. The school — a beautiful 1937 building designed by an American architect — is now open to visitors, with a dedicated room maintaining the classroom and music room settings from the anime. The community of Toyosato has developed a thoughtful and organized approach to managing visitors, and the school itself is worth visiting as a historical building independent of its anime association.
Hakone, Kanagawa — associated with multiple anime across several decades, but most specifically with Neon Genesis Evangelion and, in the contemporary era, with Yowamushi Pedal. The town has extensive official tourism infrastructure including a dedicated Evangelion map and merchandise at specific locations.
Matsumoto City, Nagano — associated with Sword Art Online. The castle and the surrounding city appear in the series, and the city has developed official tourism material connecting the anime to local attractions.
The Deeper Purpose: What Pilgrimage Is Actually For
I want to end with something more reflective than a list of etiquette rules.
The practice of seichi junrei — whatever its occasional problems with inconsiderate visitors — is, at its core, an attempt to make real something that matters to the person making the journey. The fan who travels to Washinomiya Shrine is not deluded about the fictional status of Lucky Star. They know the characters are not real. They know the shrine does not actually have the significance in the real world that it has in the story.
What they are seeking, I think, is the experience of the overlap — the specific moment in which the real place and the fictional place coincide, in which the world of the story and the world of daily life are briefly the same world. It is the experience of being, for a moment, inside something that matters to you.
This desire is human and legitimate. It is, in some respects, not different from the desire that takes people to the locations where historical events occurred, or to the birthplaces of writers they love, or to the settings of novels that shaped them. The desire to close the distance between yourself and something that matters — to be physically present where the thing happened, or where it was set, or where it was made — is a form of love.
The etiquette exists to ensure that this love does not express itself at the expense of the people who live in the places where the love travels to. The two things — the legitimacy of the practice and the necessity of the courtesy — are not in tension. They are both part of the same basic respect: respect for the work, for the places it depicts, and for the people whose ordinary lives those places contain.
Go on pilgrimage. Visit the places that matter to you. Photograph them carefully. Spend money locally. Be quiet in residential streets. Thank the places for being what they are.
Then go home and watch the anime again, knowing now what the place really looks like.
— Yoshi 🗺️ Central Japan, 2026
Enjoyed this? You might also like: “Anime Sacred Sites in Japan: Exploring the World of Seichi Junrei” and “A First-Timer’s Guide to Akihabara” — both available on Japan Unveiled.
