Recently Kids on the Slope (Sakamichi no Apollon) came out in theaters and its not an understatement to say it’s been a big deal in Sasebo. The movie is about a trio of high school students who bond over their love of jazz in 1966 Sasebo. Banners for it have been up and down the arcade for months as have movie posters on every random business and city building in town. Sasebo tourism was pretty hyped and after seeing the film we could see why.

Unlike most American films which are shot in studios, this one was shot entirely on location in Sasebo, Nagasaki and Showanomachi (“Showa Town”) in Oita’s Bungo Takada City. So part of the local film promotion included the three city’s tourism boards making location maps that show where the film was shot so you can go visit them. Map in hand, we were excited to try and find these places and recreate shots from the movie. Along the way I also wanted to see how 2018 was made to look like 1966 and through this trip found it was a lot simpler than you’d think.

I used a digital camera, but suggested my wife, who’s a local Japanese girl, wear a white blouse and black skirt like Ritsuko so I could try and recreate the 1960s with my old Argus C2 film camera but she wasn’t keen on that.

To follow along you need a location map, which can be found at this website: https://www.sasebo99.com/apollon/.

(Because we saw just the central Sasebo area sites this excluded Shirahama Beach and the Asako Church that Sentaro and Ritsuko attended.)

Kameyama Hachiman-gu Shrine
The easiest and most historic site to see is Kameyama Hachiman-gu Shrine. This is the park-like area where Kaoru sees Sentaro get into a fight. We did our sightseeing on a Sunday and weren’t alone in checking out the location, a family was taking pictures here and had the location guide as well.

There’s little modern in this area to change or hide, but to the right of the shot is a new historical marker, one of many that have sprung up around town since last year celebrating Sasebo’s naval heritage. For the film they shot at an angle that kept it off camera.

Not shown on the guide is the railing that other students watched Sentaro fight from. This is physically where it’s shown in the film- look to the right of the stairs and the tall monument. The railing is just behind it and elevated.  When I came by a teenage girl was standing at the spot as her grandfather took a picture.

Hachiman-gu Shrine has some history behind it as the shrine has been here for a very long time, though the current shrine was built in the 1960s and so would have been new at the time of the film. The previous shrine burned down during the 1945 Sasebo air raid and if you walk up the stairs to the torii gate you’ll see cracked pavement from a firebomb strike.

Following the road beside the shrine’s torii gate on Route 35 and up the hill takes you to the school and Kita Sasebo High School, which was the exterior for the film’s Higashi Sasebo High School. It’s less than a two minute walk from the shrine.

Kita Sasebo High School (Higashi Sasebo High School) and Road
As I walked up and looked back down the hill, with no cars around, it surprised me how little ‘new’ there really is over here to hide or even shoot around. It looks like the only thing they did was to slap a different sign on a telephone pole.

Higashi Sasebo High School is actually a composite of four separate schools, three active and one defunct. None of which are open to the public for obvious reasons. It should probably go without saying, but just in case: Don’t shoot here during school hours and stay off the school property. The city tourism board may point out this is the place and you can see it, but I think those other things are assumed.

Copying the shots from the movie I noticed that other than putting a new sign on the entrance they shot from angles that obscured the real school’s name over the main entrance by “hiding” it behind the gate posts or behind the big school fair sign during certain scenes.

The extras in many scenes are also regular students wearing their normal uniforms, that too hasn’t changed since the 1960s.

Since Hachiman-gu Shrine and Kita Sasebo High School are close, if driving there it would be smart to park behind the shrine and walk around the area.

Meganeiwa
Our next stop was the Meganeiwa rock formation. This is where the film gets its “Apollon.” Despite living in Sasebo her whole adult life, my wife had never been here and was awed at the sight of the strange thing. Legend has it that an oni awoke from his slumber and kicked out the two holes when he stretched.

I was amused that there’s a children’s play park right in front of this sacred spot that kind of screws with the awe factor. There’s no denying it’s a beautiful formation though.

Sailor Town (Foreigner Bars)
Sailor Town… is Sailor Town. For the movie they just added a mess of extra neon signs for more bars. If you stop and think about it if there was a bar for every sign each bar would be about three feet wide. (This is, as opposed to each bar being about three and a half feet wide.) The night before our excursion, when we saw the film, my wife practically ran me over here to point out where they shot the Sailor Town scenes, pointing at lights and signs for reference. I married a musician so she’s a little familiar with the area.

Minenosaka-cho Slope
More difficult to shoot, were the other two roads which are up in the hills overlooking Sasebo Station and the arcade. The peculiar walking path with ‘steps’ in the center is beside a friends’ home, so we already knew how to walk the twisty road to get to it. There’s no parking though so we parked elsewhere- Gobangai and Sasebo Station both are near-ish and have parking.

The path is very old, it was part of the post road system during the Edo period that led from Hirado to Edo (Tokyo). This is also one of the neighborhoods destroyed in the air raid, so this path is a remainder of that time as well.

Going up and trying to make the shot we came across a local who showed us where the director and camera man stood the day of shooting, Jun. 4, 2017. She remembers because they were supposed to be having a neighborhood clean up that day- The film crew asked them to please stop so they could film! After getting our shots she gave us directions on the quickest way to the Shirahae-cho street that Kaoru runs down when racing home from Mukae record shop.

Weird geography note- according to the Mukae Records t-shirts and tote bags, the record shop is on Sanko-cho Shopping Street, now the Sun Plaza portion of the arcade. I hadn’t realized that this portion of what’s now the arcade was still a separate street from the covered Yonka-cho end. Also, the names Yonka-cho and Sanka-cho denote that one is a combination of four chos (Yonka-cho) and the other is a combination of three (Sanka-cho).

Shirahae-cho Road
To get to neighboring Shirahae-cho we entered the hilltop maze of narrow alleys that goes all over this neighborhood before coming down the other side and trying to line up the precise street with the hill and power lines on the same side.

When we got to this site we also found that there’s a satellite dish right in the middle of the shot, but that by moving the camera over slightly it is hidden by a telephone pole. Again, except for that everything is else the same.

The other way to get to this particular road, the easier and less confusing way, would have been to back track to Route 35 then walk to the bus station and go up the hill road that runs between the bus station and the building with the highway bus station.

It doesn’t sound like much to find these very mundane locations, but we actually had a lot of fun trying to recreate shots and find the exact locations all around us in our home town like a scavenger hunt. We went through unfamiliar streets and discovered new places but also saw old ones in a different light as we tried to recreate the past. It also got me thinking about how Sasebo does have a pretty timeless quality to it and I appreciated this place I already love living in a little bit more.