Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about video game locales, about maps and whole worlds, both imagined and real. Eventually, I was left with one conviction: there are actually not that many opportunities to experience an environment the same way a game’s character does.

Part of it is the notion of escapism tied up with games. You want to swing through a jungle of skyscrapers, instead of fighting through the crowds below. You want to hack your way into government offices and assassinate people at a race track using nothing but a fish. You don’t want normal, and that’s fine.

Yet I’ve been obsessed with the juxtaposition between the normal and the leftfield that characterises so much of Japanese media, and which is evident in the locales chosen for the Yakuza series. I’ve written about that powerfully surreal feeling of stepping into a Yakuza game before. Having just visited Onomichi in Yakuza 6, I was curious how it would feel to visit a place with more immediate memories of visiting its virtual counterpart. And so I did.

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