MK Deep Dive: Totoro Forest in Itoshima – Discover Kyushu’s Hidden Ghibli Tunnel

If you have even a passing interest in contemporary Japanese pop culture, chances are you’ve seen Totoro—the cuddly, cryptic blend of bear, owl, and seal, depending on your mood. A walking Rorschach test. Brought to life by the visionary animator Miyazaki Hayao—often called the Disney of Japan, though his stories are far more lyrical and soul-stirring than anything the House of Mouse produces—Totoro is more than a character. He’s a symbol. A prayer. A reminder of something lost.

I didn’t grow up with My Neighbor Totoro. I watched it for the first time as an adult, on the couch with my now-wife. She grew up on the film, raised in the countryside of Kagawa. Half a box of Kleenex was gone by the end. I only used one—she used the rest. Or at least that’s my story. For all its whimsy, the film holds a sacred weight. It captures a kind of innocence that’s hard to put into words, threading nostalgia, Shinto spirituality, and postwar melancholy into something that leaves you changed.

While the film is set in Sayama Hills in Saitama Prefecture, just northwest of Tokyo, halfway across the country in Kyushu—down in Itoshima City—there’s an unofficial tribute site that locals and fans alike call Totoro Forest. Even Google Maps reflects the fan-given name "Totoro Forest" (トトロの森) used by visitors. Tucked into the side of Keyanooto Park, this forest path blooms into a camellia tree tunnel that, in summer, glows with Ghibli-like reverence. It’s easy to see why people draw the connection. The tunnel feels lifted from the pivotal scene where Mei-chan chases Totoro into the woods. Sunlight flickers through the green canopy just so, triggering that quiet thought: Maybe forest spirits are real. Or maybe nature isn’t as random as modernity insists.

You don’t have to be a Ghibli fan to feel the stillness here. Kyushu is one of my favorite places in all of Japan—there’s an aura to it, a softness that resists words.

After walking through the camellia tunnel, the cobalt Genkai Sea spreads out before you. A simple wooden platform gives you a view of the coast and the backside of Keya no Daimon, a rock formation woven into local lore.

The tunnel itself is easy to miss if you don’t know where to look. On the off chance that no one happens to be visiting that day for nostalgic memory, you may stumble into the opening by accident—but even that feels like it was meant to happen. Inside, the space is surprisingly vast—far larger than it seems from the outside. Like the forest in the film, it invites you to go deeper and deeper, to spin in innocence beneath the undergrowth, following the sounds of crashing waves and birdsong from creation.

Rapeseed blossoms sway in tandem with the wind as visitors chase a temporary escape from adulthood. Nostalgia is a longing—a release into a time perceived as more pleasant: no responsibilities, no goals, just running and playing with friends. Whether that past is a truth or a fiction constructed in the mind, we cannot say for sure. Time is not a fixed, objective reality—but a phenomenon of human consciousness, as St. Augustine reflected. Only the present truly exists. The past lives in memory, the future in anticipation. Totoro Forest can bring forth the remembrance of something that no longer exists—not returning in time, but still echoing in the natural tunnels of remembrance.

Let MK Guide You Through Japan’s Living Memory

In the quiet of Totoro Forest, camellia shadows cradle forgotten afternoons and childhoods that may never have been—but still feel real. Let MK walk with you down this tunnel of trees, where nostalgia becomes a prayer, and even the wind seems to remember.

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Image Credits

• Photo via Kyushu Tourism Information (Facebook)

• “DSCT1734” by gtknj is licensed under CC BY 2.0.