 Toyama was both the setting of Coffinman and Takita 's home prefecture , but filming was done in Yamagata ; this was largely because the national <unk> Association , headquartered in Hokkaido , had a branch office in Sakata . Some preliminary scenes of snowy landscapes were shot in 2007 , and primary filming began in April 2008 , lasting 40 days . Locations included Kaminoyama , Sakata , Tsuruoka , <unk> , and <unk> . The NK Agent office was filmed in a three @-@ storey , Western @-@ style building in Sakata built between the mid @-@ Meiji and Taishō periods ( 1880s – 1920s ) . Originally a restaurant named <unk> Obata , it went out of business in 1998 . The <unk> ' café , called Concerto in the film , was located in Kaminoyama in a former beauty salon . From a hundred candidates , Takita chose it for its atmosphere as an aged building with a clear view of the nearby river and surrounding mountain range . The scene of the shooting of the training DVD took place in the Sakata Minato @-@ za , Yamagata 's first movie theatre , which had been closed since 2002 . 
