Access: ~30 min by tram from Matsuyama Airport to Dogo Onsen Station

Built in 1894, Dogo Onsen Honkan is Japan’s oldest continuously operating public bathhouse — a three-story wooden structure topped with a small tower and a white egret weather vane, rising above the steaming town of Matsuyama. The building’s profile — tiered roofs, wooden galleries, steam — is the most cited real-world model for Yubaba’s bathhouse exterior.

The baths themselves are worth it independently: Kami no Yu (God’s Bath) and the more formal Tama no Yu (Spirit’s Bath) with changing rooms and yukata service. The water is a sodium bicarbonate spring — smooth and mineral. The experience of bathing in a 130-year-old wooden bathhouse carries a resonance that modern onsen facilities cannot produce.

✦ Note: Dogo Onsen Honkan has been under restoration since 2019. Parts of the facility remain open — verify current status before visiting. The surrounding bath town is fully active and beautiful at night.

Access: ~40 min by car or bus from JR Oishida Station (Yamagata Shinkansen)

Where Dogo provides the daytime bathhouse image, Ginzan provides the night. Taisho and Showa-era multi-story wooden ryokan line both sides of the Ginzan River, lit in the evening by gas lamps, with hot spring steam drifting across the cobblestone paths. When snow falls — which in Yamagata it does substantially, from December through February — the scene approaches the uncanny.

Ginzan is a destination that requires staying overnight to experience properly. Day visitors see a beautiful old town; overnight guests experience the moment, beginning at dusk, when the gas lamps ignite and the inn windows glow and the steam thickens. That transition is what the film captures in its night sequences, and it happens here every evening.

✦ Best season: December–February for snow · Book 2–3 months ahead for winter weekends — this is one of Japan’s hardest-to-book destinations

Access: ~5 min by bus from JR Musashi-Koganei Station · Open 9:30–17:30, closed Mondays · ¥400 entry

Miyazaki and art director Kazuo Oga are documented to have visited this outdoor architectural museum repeatedly during production. Approximately 30 historic buildings from the Edo to Showa periods have been relocated here and preserved — including the ones most directly connected to the film.

Kodakara-yu (public bathhouse, built 1929): The exterior — soaring chidori-style gabled roof, tiled façade, formal entrance — is considered the most direct architectural model for Yubaba’s bathhouse. The scale and composition are striking in person.

Musashino Bungu-ten (stationery shop): The interior arrangement of this late Meiji shop — rows upon rows of small drawers behind the counter — appears almost directly in the scene where Chihiro works at the bathhouse counter.

✦ The museum is excellent in its own right — one of Tokyo’s finest cultural sites — regardless of Ghibli connection. Budget 2–3 hours. The late afternoon light on old wooden buildings is exceptional.