Tachikawa for Foreign Visitors: Haneda Bus, Things to Do, Future

Only 2.3% of Tokyo’s foreign visitors reach Tachikawa. How to get there from Haneda by one bus, what surprises travellers, and the city’s plans for tourism.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

2.3. Ask foreign travellers leaving Tokyo “Where did you go?” and, out of every hundred, two and a bit will answer “Tachikawa”.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government carried out a survey in the departure lounges of Haneda and Narita airports, putting that question to just over 16,000 foreign travellers on their way out of Japan. The list of places they visited begins with Shibuya at 60.3%, then runs through the familiar names: Ginza, Tokyo Station, Shinjuku, Asakusa. Follow it down, and further down, and only in 21st place does Tachikawa (立川) finally appear. 2.3%.

That’s small, I thought. Then: wait a moment. The list picks out only 25 places in the whole of Tokyo, and the name Tachikawa sits on it alone, not bundled with some neighbouring town. Two travellers in every hundred have made the effort to come all the way out to Tachikawa. So what did they come to see? And what should this town show the other 98? I decided to walk around behind the number.

How many foreign travellers visit Tachikawa? Inbound tourism in numbers

Let me start with the big figure.

According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, about 28.65 million foreign travellers visited Tokyo in 2025, up 15.6% on the year before and a record. They spent about 4.5534 trillion yen in Tokyo, also a record. The metropolitan government has set a target of more than 30 million by 2030, and that target is already in sight.

Where in Tokyo do those 28.65 million go? The survey I mentioned at the start, the metropolitan government’s 2025 edition of its study of foreign travellers’ behaviour by country and region, interviewed foreigners leaving Japan in the international departure lounges at Haneda and Narita. There were 16,008 responses. The top places visited were Shibuya at 60.3%, Ginza at 54.1%, the Tokyo Station, Marunouchi and Nihonbashi area at 51.8%, Shinjuku and Okubo at 50.8%, and Asakusa at 46.9%.

The place names of Tama, the long western half of Tokyo beyond the 23 central wards, are gathered much further down. Kichijoji and Mitaka at 4.0%, Hachioji and Mount Takao at 3.2%. Then, with Kamata’s 3.0% in between, Tachikawa at 2.3%. Below Tachikawa come Kameari and Shibamata at 1.5%, Okutama at 1.1%, and Ome and Mount Mitake at 0.8%. Shibamata is the old-town home of Tora-san, the wandering hero of one of Japan’s best-loved film series. Tachikawa is visited by more foreigners than Tora-san’s neighbourhood. I think that is a fact the townspeople may quietly be proud of.

Now let me try one rough multiplication. 28.65 million times 2.3% comes to roughly 660,000. But this is only my own estimate. The survey asked people as they left the country, and the metropolitan figure of 28.65 million is counted in a different way. So 660,000 means no more than “people in that order of magnitude may be coming”. Still, the order of magnitude matters. Possibly hundreds of thousands of travellers are stepping off the train at Tachikawa with passports in their pockets.

The same survey also asked what travellers did in Tokyo. The most common answer was “enjoy Japanese food”, at 89.0%. Next came shopping for daily goods, cosmetics, food and sweets, at 62.7%. 34.2% bought anime or manga goods, and 13.4% took part in anime events or visited places connected with anime. Please remember that last number. We will come back to it in Tachikawa.

The survey asked one more thing: what travellers found attractive about Tokyo. First was “people are kind”, at 53.6%. Second, “clean”, at 53.5%. Third, “safe”, at 51.8%. Not the scenery, not the food, but people first. That kindness turns out to be the number-one tourist resource is welcome news for any town that receives travellers, and also makes it a little nervous.

So why is Tachikawa at 2.3%? Half of the answer lies in Tachikawa’s past.

Back then, Tachikawa was the most “foreign” town in Tokyo

Foreigners coming to Tachikawa is not, in fact, a new story at all.

According to the city chronology, in Showa 2 (1927) a Soviet goodwill aircraft flew into Tachikawa Airfield: the first foreign aircraft to come to Tachikawa. (Showa is the imperial era that ran from 1926 to 1989; Japanese local records count years by era, so I give both.) The chronology goes on: foreign aircraft arrived one after another, and Tachikawa Airfield became an international airport. Nearly a hundred years ago, Tokyo’s gateway to the sky was in Tachikawa. Civil aviation did not move to Haneda until Showa 8 (1933).

The city’s history of the airfield describes that era with a little more pride. Famous aviators came from abroad one after another, it says, and the name Tachikawa became known internationally too. The booklet even includes a photograph of Miss Veedol, the American aircraft that made the first successful nonstop flight across the Pacific. Nor did the traffic run only one way. Before dawn on 6 April 1937 (Showa 12), the Asahi newspaper company’s Japanese-built aircraft Kamikaze-go took off from Tachikawa and reached London after flying 15,357 kilometres in 94 hours, 17 minutes and 56 seconds. The world came to Tachikawa, and from Tachikawa people set out into the world. A century ago this town may have felt the size of the planet far more closely than it does today.

After the war, foreigners came not from the sky but from beyond the gate. In September 1945 (Showa 20), the US forces who moved into Tachikawa requisitioned the airfield and set up Tachikawa Air Base. The city’s local-history booklet Tachikawa Monogatari (Tales of Tachikawa) writes that the American officers and soldiers who worked on the base became important customers for the shopping streets around the gate in Akebonocho, Takamatsucho and Fujimicho. A photograph from around 1952 of the crossroads in Akebonocho 2-chome shows signs lined up for American servicemen.

Another issue of the same booklet carries a photograph of Tachikawa Station at Christmas in 1950: a Santa Claus decorating the station, and a transport plane passing overhead. Tachikawa, the booklet says, became the front line of American culture. Souvenir shops for foreigners spread across the North Exit of the station and over the tracks to the South Exit as well.

Back then, English signs lined the streets, goods were sold for dollars, and Santa stood at the station. In the Showa era Tachikawa may have been one of the towns in Tokyo that smelled most strongly of “abroad”. Some older residents surely still remember the colours of those signs.

In those days, the foreigners who came to Tachikawa wore uniforms. Today, the foreigners who come to Tachikawa pull suitcases. And next? The city’s plans picture yet another kind of traveller beyond that. But before the plans, I want to talk about the ground under the traveller’s feet. How do you get here from the airport?

From Haneda Airport to Tachikawa: about an hour and a half on one bus, no changes

GO TOKYO, Tokyo’s official tourism website, opens its English page on Tachikawa and Kunitachi like this: located 30 minutes west of Shinjuku Station, the two towns provide a relaxing moment of respite from the congestion and intensity of central Tokyo. The headline reads “Tokyo’s biggest park” — meaning Showa Kinen Park (Showa Memorial Park).

The same page also gives directions from the airports. From Haneda Airport, one hour and 25 minutes by train. From Narita Airport, two hours and 45 minutes by Limousine Bus, or two hours and 15 minutes by train. From Shinjuku, 30 minutes on the Chuo Line Special Rapid; from Tokyo Station, 50 minutes.

From Haneda there is another way, too: the “Haneda Airport Line”, a bus run jointly by Tachikawa Bus and Keikyu Bus. According to Tachikawa Bus’s timetable, there are 22 departures a day from Haneda Airport bound for Yaho, Kunitachi, Tachikawa and Akishima. At Terminal 3, the international terminal, you board at stop 4. The first bus from Terminal 3 leaves at 6:40, the last at 22:40. According to the timetable, the ride to Tachikawa Station North Exit takes somewhere between 1 hour 10 minutes and about 2 hours; the morning buses take longest. The timetable goes out of its way to add that the journey time varies with traffic.

The fare is 2,000 yen for adults and half that, 1,000 yen, for children. You can pay in cash or with a transport IC card. For buses towards Tachikawa, you first buy a ticket for a specific departure at the airport’s bus ticket counter or ticket machine, then board. Going the other way, from Tachikawa to Haneda, no booking is needed: seats are first come, first served, up to capacity. Buses leave from stop 13 at Tachikawa Station’s North Exit, the earliest one in the 4 a.m. hour. For a traveller terrified of missing a flight, a departure at 4:05 a.m. is quite a reassuring number.

Hauling a suitcase from train to train is a small adventure for a traveller who doesn’t read the language. Get on a bus once at Haneda, and all you have to do is sit and watch through the window as Tokyo grows lower and greener. You cross Tokyo from its eastern edge to the middle of its west for 2,000 yen. Looked at on a map, that is a pretty good deal.

What kind of station do you arrive at? According to the city’s industrial promotion plan, Tachikawa Station has the highest average daily ridership of any Chuo Line station in the 26 cities of Tama, and is third on the entire Chuo Line, after only Shinjuku and Tokyo. In JR East’s figures for fiscal 2024, about 150,000 people a day board here. The Chuo, Ome and Nambu lines meet here, and the Tama Monorail crosses them from north to south. From Kawasaki in Kanagawa you can arrive on the Nambu Line without changing. For a traveller it is the interchange from which you can reach anywhere in the western side of Tokyo.

And once off the train, what does a traveller look for next? An information centre, probably.

The only metropolitan tourist information centre in Tama, and a door in 130 languages

Inside the ticket gates of Tachikawa Station, on the third floor of ecute Tachikawa (the shopping zone inside the station), is one of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s tourist information centres. Of the six the metropolitan government runs in Tokyo, this is the only one outside the 23 wards. I wrote about it in detail in this series’ rainy-day walk, so here I will add just one thing. On GO TOKYO’s English pages this centre is listed as “Tama (ecute Tachikawa, 3F)”. In an English travel guide, the name of Tachikawa’s station stands as the counter for the whole of Tama.

Outside the information centre, too, there are doors into other languages.

Open the city of Tachikawa’s official website and there is a translation link at the top of the page, with a long list of languages. I counted them: 130. English, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Nepali, of course, but also Afrikaans, Esperanto, Hawaiian, even Zulu. Will someone one day read the rules for Tachikawa’s rubbish collection in Zulu? If they do, I feel I could become friends with them.

The tourist information is a little more down to earth. According to the city’s “useful tourist information” page, the Tachikawa sightseeing digital map, which needs no app download and no registration, works in Japanese, English, traditional and simplified Chinese, Korean, Spanish, French, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Burmese (Myanmar) and Thai. It links to your phone’s location, and you can search by purpose: “play”, “eat”, “see”, “buy”, “stay” and so on. The paper Tachikawa Tourist Guide Map comes in three languages, Japanese, English and traditional Chinese, and includes four recommended sightseeing routes.

The same page is honest, though. The Tachikawa Guide Book, which introduces the city’s sights field by field, exists only in Japanese, and the page says so in English: “Japanese version only.” To announce, in English, that something is only in Japanese. It is sincere, but a traveller will probably smile. The day this book comes out in English will be one of the markers, I think, of the day Tachikawa opens to the world.

Tachikawa as the world sees it, in numbers

• 2.3 — per cent. The share of foreign travellers to Tokyo who said they visited Tachikawa. More than Shibamata, fewer than Kichijoji.
• 2,000 — yen. The adult fare on the no-change bus from Haneda Airport to Tachikawa Station. As the price of crossing Tokyo from east to west, a conscientious one.
• 130 — the number of translation languages you can choose on the city of Tachikawa’s official website. Zulu is one of them.
• 10 — the number of languages the Tachikawa sightseeing digital map supports. Burmese is one of them.
• 6,591 — foreign residents of Tachikawa on 1 January 2026. About 1.7 times the figure nine years earlier. Before the city welcomes travellers, the world already lives here.
• 109 — artworks in Faret Tachikawa, by 92 artists from 36 countries. The bollards in front of the station are already an international exhibition.

Traveller’s detour quiz

How many languages does the city’s Tachikawa sightseeing digital map support? (A) 3 languages (B) 6 languages (C) 10 languages. The answer comes at the end.

Suppose the doors of language are all in place. What about what lies behind them? What makes a visitor from abroad stop in their tracks in Tachikawa? When I counted, there were more than I expected.