Day 12 Part 8 - Seiseki-Sakuragaoka (Whisper of the Heart filming location)

We had a few hours of daylight left, and an all day unlimited Keio line train pass, so we took the train to Seiseki-Sakuragaoka station (聖蹟桜ヶ丘駅)

This somewhat obscure suburban train station with an unwieldy name (together with surrounding locations) was the inspiration for the location used in the animation film 「耳をすませば」 (Whisper of the Heart).

Apparently when the film was first shown, audiences living around the area gasped with surprise and delight that the film were depicting their neighbourhood and one kid even shouted to his mother "Look! That's our house on the screen!" For a while, there were even tour groups taking people to see the various locations depicted so faithfully in the film.

There's an information board right outside the station that gives a brief overview of the key locations featured in the film and how to visit them:

In the film, one of the early scenes featured the main character, a junior high school girl called Shizuku catching the Keio train and exiting the station:

And here's the train in real life:

And this is the real Keio department store:

 The main intersection as depicted in the film:

And the intersection in real life:

In the film, Shizuku walks to a curvy road leading up the a hill, and crosses a bridge over the Tama River:

In real life, the leading to the curvy road is called Sakura Doori (さくら通り):

And the curvy road is called Irohazakadoori (いろは坂通り):

We retraced Shizuku's steps:

The "library" in the film is missing in real life:

Tama River in the film:

Tama River in real life:

Later on in the film, we see more scenes featuring this road:

In real life:

In the film Shizuku, notices a fat white cat (called "Moon") and follows it up a flight of stairs to a roundabout:

In real life, we also climbed stairs:

And we also found the roundabout:

These two kids cycling reminded me of the film's two characters (Shizuku and Seiji)

We didn't find any cats, but we found a few dogs being taken for walks:

In the film, Shizuku discovers an interesting antique shop next to the roundabout:

This house does not exist in real life, but we found a close equivalent:

View of the house from the bottom of the hill in the film:

In real life:

The shrine on top of the hill in the film:

The shrine in real life:

Views from the top of the hill in the film:

In real life:

Finally, we walked back to the station in the evening:

On the way back, we stopped by at a supermarket - I've always wanted to see what a typical suburban Japanese supermarket looks like. The answer is: it looks like a bigger version of an Asian grocery store:

We had dinner at a Curry House:

Location on Google Maps:

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