Shinkai Makoto’s latest movie Suzume no Tojimari centers on a pair of “closers” who search Japan for open doors that invite calamity into this world. They set off from Suzume’s hometown of Miyazaki City where they find the first door. Their journey takes them across the Bungo Strait toward Kobe, to Tokyo and further east, before the show wraps up.
After two weeks of working from Tokyo, it was time to undergo the anime pilgrimage, which was the main motivation for organizing this Japan trip in the first place. Like Suzume, I had to start from Kyushu.
From Tokyo, I took a Shinkansen ride to Kokura Station in Kita-Kyushu. There, I transferred to Sonic Nichirin, a beautiful and speedy inter-city train, bound for Oita City. Again, I transferred over to the Kyudai Main Line, my final destination being Yufuin, a famous hot springs town. There I would set up camp and take half-day trips to select anime locations nearby.
The Kyushu locations were a frustrating affair for a number of reasons. For example, the movie gives us the impression Suzume’s house is in cycling distance of the first magical door, as well as the ferry port where she runs after Daijin. The reality, however, is that the movie version of Miyazaki City is a patchwork of multiple cities and towns across Kyushu, including Nagasaki, Kagoshima, Nichinan, Beppu, Usuki, Oita, Kusu, Yunohira, and Miyazaki proper. There is no Miyazaki like in the movies!
Visiting that many locations would naturally pose a problem for a resource-constrained pilgrim. So I had to make a couple of hard choices … While likely interesting in their own right, I decided to skip Nagasaki and Miyazaki, because they were simply too out of the way and required additional time and attention that I simply could not afford to give. I crossed off Yunohira as well, the model location for the abandoned town of the first door. I will explain later why.
Now I did manage to visit three of the locations out of many, but in certain regards they too turned out to be quite disappointing.
Bungo-Mori Roundhouse Museum in Kusu
The Bungo-Mori Roundhouse is the model location for the first door. The roundhouse functioned as a midway turning platform for the steam-powered locomotive connecting Kurume and Oita. After 1970, the facilities were surrendered to gradual decay and later turned into a park-museum.
Old concrete walls with broken windows serve as the perfect backdrop for the lonesome door which got erected as part of the movie’s promotion. Although the roundhouse fits the mood of the movie perfectly, all props aside, visually it is not much of a close match. The shape of the roundhouse fills up a circle only to about a third, while the building from the movie looks like a fully oval structure, possibly a broken glass dome.
I also visited the museum and managed to land a conversation with its staff. They shared they get many visitors these days, even from abroad. Some of the museum’s artifacts include Love Live themed merchandise, meaning Suzume was not the first from the entertainment industry to stake a claim for this location. The museum even has a replica of Souta the Chair, which the visitors can rent out free of charge. Despite my initial hold up, the staff encouraged me to take it around the museum-park for a photo shoot. It was a bit embarrassing walking around with it while other visitors curiously followed what this foreigner was up to. However, this led to another conversation with an exchange student from Shanghai, which gave me a hint to the breadth of visitors the place must be receiving.
On my ride back to Yufuin I decided a visit to Yunohira would be untenable this time around, mainly due to my inability to secure transportation to it. Yunohira is another hot spring town up in the hills and accessible only via motorway. I was hoping I could get to it by foot, but the receptionist at my ryokan advised against it. He also mentioned I would unlikely be able to reserve a taxi for it in the time I was there.
The next day I made an early morning dash toward Usuki.
Rail Crossing at Usuki Senior High School
Before saying goodbye to Kyushu, I made one final stop on the back side of Usuki Station. Astral Tanbou, whose map I used to look up most of the locations, identified the railway crossing close to the station as a location from Suzume’s commute to school.
I admit I was a bit sloppy with my camera work here, but the scouts seem agree this location isn’t much of a match, considering railway crossings like these can be found nearly everywhere in Japan. A bit of a waste, this one.
Usuki Port
In case you are wondering why I have not gone toward Miyazaki City and taken the ferry there like Suzume had, it is because the movie straight up made up everything about it. Firstly, there are no regular ferry routes connecting Miyazaki and Ehime. If you want to reach Shikoku by ferry, you have to be in either Beppu City or in Usuki, where I was that morning.
Moreover, it is safe to state that the port from the movie is almost completely fictional. It adopts a few buildings from Beppu, and some from Usuki too, but I think the overall goal of the production was to make the port look like part of a much smaller town.
The Uwajima-Unyu Ferries run regular routes from the ports seven times a day. Pilgrims will find that the ports offer their own perks respectively, depending on what one values more. If you sail out from Beppu, you get to ride the bigger ferry model which was also boarded by Suzume. I was hoping I would get to ride that same boat from Usuki, but sadly that was not the case. However, the Usuki Port does have that ridicuously oversized “Ferry Noriba” sign, which the movie includes in the final, aerial composition of the port. The sign was a detail I noticed while scavenging through Google Maps desperately trying to find a coastal town that would at least partially match the one from the movie. That stroke of luck was the reason I picked Usuki. On the screenshot there is also the ferry terminal building, right next to the sign, a photo of which I somehow managed to lose.
In hindsight, Kyushu was a bit of a wash. I did enjoy myself soaking in Yufuin’s hot spring water, but the yield from the pilgrimage thus far had been surprisingly low. I was a bit worried that this would become a pattern for the rest of the trip. After all, the movie did make Suzume speed-run through Shikoku … Stay tuned to find out?
Thank you for reading!
cythoplazma 