Despite my lack of enthusiasm for much of this film it has served me well and the ‘Tokyo Filming Locations‘ post on it actually used to get a few hundred hits on a daily basis for many years. As is the way though, someone came along and did a much better job which is not so hard really as I thought my post was fairly average at best! That post now gets very little in the way of clicks!

The Tokyo locations rightly get all the acclaim and attention but it is perhaps forgotten that Kyoto also features for a short time as Charlotte (Scarlett Johanson) visits a  temple and a shrine on her little trip to the city. I was never really planning to stop in Kyoto on my Kansai trip back in October of last year but as I was passing through the nearest station to one of the shrines, and it was still open, I decided to disembark for a quick visit.

Heian-jingu shrine appears on 72 minutes when Charlotte walks over the stepping stones (below) in it’s expansive garden which is located on the eastern side of the the classic Shinto shrine complex.

Moments later she’s walking across the impressively vast shrines grounds of the shrine which was originally built in 1895.

Before those brief shots, Nanzen-ji features for a short time. This temple is a 15-20 minute walk eastwards of Heian-jingu Shrine but I didn’t go there as I always thought these scenes were shot at Chion-in which I have photos of as that was used in ‘The Last Samurai‘ (2003). I’ll be sure to visit Nanzen-ji next time I’m in Kyoto!

The whole Kyoto scene is just under three minutes and can be seen in the video below.

There’s the briefest shot of Atami and Izu from the bullet train en-route to Kyoto. Atami-jo Castle can be seen in the former and Hatsushima Island in the latter.

Bonus: The garden of Heian-jingu also appears for a moment towards the end of ‘Memoirs Of A Geisha‘ (2005) which is arguably the most famous production to have taken place in Kyoto, especially with regard to the iconic torii gate imagery at Fushimi Inari Shrine.

For the record, other films to have been set in Kyoto include ‘The Yakuza‘ (1974), ‘The Challenge‘ (1982) and ‘Wasabi‘ (2000).

Click here to read ‘Tokyo Filming Locations #2 – Lost In Translation (2003)’

Click here to read ‘Tokyo Daytripper: Jougan-ji a.k.a. The ‘Lost In Translation’ Temple’

Click here to read ‘Review: Films Set In Japan – Lost In Translation (2003)’