GeGeGe no Kitaro: the real places
Everyone points at Sakaiminato, where Mizuki Shigeru was born and where a street carries 177 bronze yokai. Chofu is the other half of the story and much easier to reach: he lived and drew here for about fifty years, twenty minutes from Shinjuku, and the town treats him as a resident rather than an export. The city built a Kitaro playground, the shopping street to the shrine carries monuments of the characters, and the tea house by Jindai-ji has been serving under the eyes of a yokai roof for years. It is an afternoon, on the Keio line, with a temple and a soba street attached — and unlike a statue trail, two of the three are places you go inside.
3 places
Café · Rules of its own
Kitaro Chaya, Jindai-ji
A tea house beside Jindai-ji, the second-oldest temple in Tokyo, with yokai on the roof and Kitaro's hair-jelly on the menu. It is a permanent address rather than a collaboration — the thing this list has too few of — and it sits in the middle of a street of soba restaurants that were there long before the manga.
- Address
- 東京都調布市深大寺元町5-12-8
- Getting there
- Bus from Chofu or Mitaka to Jindaiji, then a short walk
By bus from Chofu or Mitaka to the Jindaiji stop. The temple grounds and the soba street are the reason to allow more time than the tea house itself needs.
Rules of its own. It is small, beside an active temple, and it fills at lunch. Queue rather than crowd the doorway, and remember the temple next door is a place of worship and not part of the attraction.
On the map · Official page · read on September 26, 2026
Park
Kitaro playground
A public playground the city built and themed on the work: climbing frames as characters, in an ordinary residential block, free and open. It is the least famous of the three and the one that says most about how Chofu treats him — not a monument to a dead author but equipment for local children.
- Address
- 東京都調布市下石原1-58-5
- Getting there
- Keio line, Nishi-Chofu, about 10 min on foot
About ten minutes on foot from Nishi-Chofu, one stop from Chofu on the Keio line.
On the map · Official page · read on September 26, 2026
Street
Tenjin-dori shopping street
The street from the north exit of Chofu station up to Fuda Tenjin shrine, with monuments of Kitaro and the others standing along it — the city's own pages send people here. It is a working shopping street with a second Kitaro tea house on it, so the characters are among shops rather than in a display.
- Address
- 東京都調布市布田1丁目（調布駅北口から布多天神社への参道）
- Getting there
- Keio line, Chofu, north exit, at the station
Straight out of the north exit of Chofu on the Keio line, twenty minutes from Shinjuku. Free, outdoors, and takes as long as you let it.
On the map · Official page · read on September 26, 2026
How this list is made
A place is listed when the work, its publisher or the town's own tourism page names it, and the page it was read on is linked with the date it was read. Positions come from OpenStreetMap or from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan, never from Google.
We never show a frame of a work beside a photograph of a place. The scene is described in words instead, which is also the version a screen reader and three languages can use. How we check and rank, in full.