A Taiwanese pilgrim’s daytrip into the scenes of Your Name

In the summer of 2016, the Japanese animation film Your Name. became a record-breaking hit in Japan and across East Asia. Not only was the film a box office success, it also gained a cult following that triggered a huge touristic phenomenon known as seichi junrei, or ‘sacred site pilgrimage.’ Due to the film’s remarkably realistic portrayal of Tokyo, fans flocked to the particular locations featured in the film to relive the filmic experience on-site. Shortly after the film’s release in Taiwan, a Taiwanese tourist went on a daytrip to Tokyo for a Your Name. pilgrimage. Analyzing his online travelogue, this paper examines the process through which the fantasized images of the film become interlaced with physical reality in the mind of a contents tourist. In addition, this paper introduces the PTT Japan Travel board, the platform where he published his travel stories, as an untapped resource for researching the itineraries of Taiwanese tourists. Furthermore, I allude to the postcolonial implication in the unusual nonchalance of a daytrip from Taiwan to Japan.