Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Wolf Children - House Part 1

The house from Wolf Children is located in the town of Kamiichi in real life, so I went there to take some pictures. This post mostly contains pictures of various interesting sights I saw while there. If you want to see more comparison shots check out part 2.



At Kamiichi Station, I rented one of these bikes. Unlike a lot of other remote places I've been in Japan, they had mountain bikes here instead of simple mamachari bicycles.




Which was a good thing, because there were uphill roads almost all the way to the house. A few of them were dangerous too, like this road which had warning signs for falling rocks.




Bear warning signs as well. The roads weren't in the best of shapes either, so it was good to have a proper bicycle. Better try to avoid going up all these steep rural roads during winter if you plan to go there yourself.




Kamiichi tourism map I saw on the way. There are some hot springs and lots of temples and shrines in the town. You can see the Wolf Children house on this map as well in the upper right part.




There were Wolf Children signs near the house, so you couldn't mistake it for one of the few other nearby houses. The house is open to visitors, but check the visiting hours on the official website before you go.




Image from Wolf Children - 36m53s


To the right of the area in the previous picture there was a small field.




The field had this Wolf Children inspired warning sign.




Image from Wolf Children - 110m03s


The house itself. The guy who runs the official website, Hidenori Kawabata, was visiting from Hiroshima and he owned a car similar to the one in the movie, which you can see parked outside the house.




Inside the entrance to the house. There's a donation box here for people visiting.




Map of the whole house.




Image from Wolf Children - 49m29s


The main living room. On the wall there were drawings of countries people who had visited were from. The guy who runs the website, which is also the vice president of the NPO that takes care of the house, asked me to draw one as well, which you can spot on the floor if you look closely.




Image from Wolf Children - 42m52s


Closeup of the little table from the previous picture.




Image from Wolf Children - 60m20s


On the wall to the left in this room they had lots of drawings made by people who visited and a copy of the dress Hana made for Yuki in the movie.




Right side of the room. The Boy and the Beast poster on the wall, another movie made by Mamoru Hosoda, the director of Wolf Children.




You could pose for pictures in this cardboard cutout.




Poster for a howling contest that happened at the house earlier in the year.




Small area in front of the main living room with various Wolf Children goods and some pictures on display.




One of the pictures was of Mamoru Hosoda and other staff visiting the house. Mamoru Hosoda is on the left and the owner of the house Masami Yamazaki, which is also the president of the NPO, is sitting next to him.




Image from Wolf Children - 32m52s


The room next to the main living room. You can see the view outside which is different from the anime.




If you look closely at the top of the previous picture you can see that they had these shikishi sign boards from people who had visited here.




In a corner of the room they had some goods for sale.






And they had one of these guestbooks as well.




I signed it of course.



Location map:



This location was visited on 2016/10/11.

Links:
House official website

Special thanks to the ones who went here before:
http://tianlang2.s206.xrea.com/Ookami-kodomo3.htm

3 comments:

  1. Hi!!! Im planning to visit this place too. ive been trying to search for other blog posts regarding this but yours is the most comprehensive so i was wondering if i can ask some questions. Im having thoughts if its possible to do as a day trip? (accdg to my calculations based on hyperdia it'll take about an hour from kanazawa to toyama to kamiichi - riding a shinkansen and making all the transfers)

    would you say its a worthwhile day trip? is the scenery in the town beautiful (ill be in japan in mid november- im hoping to see some autumn foliage in that area)?
    how much is the bike rental at the kamiichi station?
    how many hours did it take you to go through all the wolf children locations in kamiichi via bike?

    thank you so much!! hoping to hear from you :D

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    Replies
    1. Hi there.

      Yeah, it's a small rural town with lots of fields and forests when you bike around. You'll probably see the most autumn foliage up in the mountains when you get close to the Wolf Children house, so it would be good for that. There's also some onsens in town you could relax at after sightseeing.

      The bike rental is 1000 JPY deposit and you get 500 JPY of it back when you return the bike. The rental form is all in Japanese and the people that was working at the tourist information office didn't speak any English when I was there so you better know some Japanese or bring a device with Google translate on it if you're renting a bike.

      It took me 5 hours to go to all the locations in total.

      Have fun!

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    2. Nice! Looking forward to seeing kamiichi in person!

      This isnt my first time renting a bike in japan however, the most i know would be _______ doko desu ka lolol ill remember to bring a pocket wifi with me.

      Thank you so much!!

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