イタリア産天然溶岩石を使った溶岩ホットヨガスタジオ「オンザショア」

イタリア産天然溶岩石を使った溶岩ホットヨガスタジオ「オンザショア」

Tachikawa GREEN SPRINGS Guide: Goats, a Rooftop River, Things to Do

Walking GREEN SPRINGS by season and by hour

The district has more than 350 plant species. From winter into early spring there are Christmas roses, wintersweet and narcissus. In March and April, mitsumata, the paper bush. From spring to early summer, yamabuki (Japanese kerria), mountain hydrangea and ayame irises. In summer, agapanthus, balloon flowers and echinacea. From autumn into early winter, asters and tsuwabuki, the yellow leopard plant, and from November to January the next year, manryo, the coralberry, puts out red berries. Whatever month you come, something is in flower. The calendar of Tama’s wildflowers keeps turning on a rooftop by the station.

The calendar suggests how to walk. Mountain hydrangea from May to July, bigleaf hydrangea in June and July, ayame in May. The early-summer rainy season is when the waterside flowers overlap. In summer, balloon flowers and echinacea hang on until October; in autumn, asters last until November and tsuwabuki until December. Anyone who thinks of winter as a bleak season will be surprised to find wintersweet, narcissus and Christmas rose on that list. From December to February, on a rooftop by a station, wintersweet is blooming yellow.

There is also the matter of the hour. Asaza flowers open only during the day. If you want to meet a water plant, come in daylight.

At night, other works wake up. “TANE,” by WERC, lights up when the sun goes down and changes the way it glows according to that day’s weather. Tetsuya Nakamura’s “Jōshō Kiryū” (roughly, “Rising Shining Dragon”), lifted on three legs, floats out of the dark under floodlights. And the plaza does not close. According to the 2025 ministry document, GREEN SPRINGS is open 24 hours a day. After the shop lights go out, the cascade keeps up its sound. The better you know the daytime crowds, the more the quiet will surprise you.

Look up, and on the roof of SORANO HOTEL there is an infinity pool. According to the hotel’s official site it is an outdoor pool usable in all seasons, reserved for hotel guests and members of its spa. It has nothing to do with a passing walker. Looking up from below and imagining the green of Showa Kinen Park spreading beyond that water is about the right amount of involvement. A river on one roof, a pool on another. This district simply cannot stop putting water on top of things. When this land was an airfield, all that was asked of it was to be wide and flat. Now it devotes itself to laying water on top of that flatness.

That is enough about seasons and hours. But one more condition was imposed on this district: culture.

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A museum, a playground, and a hundred-year sculpture

The tender required a cultural facility of about 10,000 square metres. One answer is TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN, a multipurpose hall with about 2,500 seats, the largest in the Tama area. According to its official site, more than 3,000 people fit inside when it is set up for standing, the hall can open onto the outdoors, and an open-air theatre can appear. You can walk around its outer edge, roof included.

The sculpture "mirai", numbers painted a different colour for each year, outside TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN.
The sculpture “mirai”, numbers painted a different colour for each year, outside TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN.
Photo: Kakidai / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

One building in the district houses PLAY! MUSEUM and PLAY! PARK: the museum on the second floor, an indoor park for children on the third. The facility describes itself as a cultural complex that fuses a museum with a playground, “something that should have existed but didn’t.” In autumn 2026 it is showing an exhibition by the picture-book artist Chiki Kikuchi, running until 13 December. PLAY! PARK’s motto is “encounters with the unknown.” On its signature “big plate,” large play structures are built out of balloons, newspaper and construction materials. For a newspaper that has already been read, there could be no better second career.

There are also nine works of public art in the district. Tetsuya Nakamura’s “Jōshō Kiryū” is an abstract form combining the curves of a bird with the cool of industrial products. I have already mentioned WERC’s “TANE,” which wakes at night. Beside the entrance to TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN stands Masayoshi Akagawa’s “Three Plane Trees and the Happy Three Musicians.” It draws on a campaign by local people to save three plane trees that were due to be cut down in the redevelopment, and it shows the trees’ fairies playing oboe, clarinet and bassoon. Some works were chosen by open competition. “GATE,” by the Keita Mori Sculpture Project, renders the artist Keita Mori’s “thread drawings” in metal as a three-dimensional gateway, a symbol tying Tachikawa’s history of silk farming and aircraft to the future of its people and culture. Miyu Araki’s “Breathing Stone” is a stone with holes in it, meant to change its face over time as seeds fall into it and moss grows. “Clover of Happiness,” by the art seminar of Seisa International High School’s Tachikawa Learning Center, is a set of transparent four-leaf clovers on which participants draw and which are then planted in the flower beds. Local residents and high-school students make it together.

After goats, tree fairies. On this land, the residents who are not human always get excellent treatment.

Emmanuelle Moureaux’s “mirai” (Japanese for “future”) is a sculpture that makes visible a hundred years, from 2020 to 2119. It is divided into five layers, and each year is painted a different colour. The description asks you to look at it from the monorail window, too. The person who will check the colour of the final layer has probably not been born yet. Perhaps, in 2119, a Tachikawa child will look up at this sculpture and search for the colour of the year they were born.

The document submitted to the ministry explains that the 24-hour opening comes from a mindset: this is not a commercial facility but a space for the local community.

Not a commercial facility, say the developers themselves, flatly. Then what is this district for? The clue lies in the English words on its signs.

Well-being, and Tama, the 48th prefecture

The slogan of GREEN SPRINGS is “a well-being town where sky, earth and people connect.” “Well-being” is a word you see everywhere these days. Honestly, I tend to brace myself when I meet that sort of borrowed English.

But Tatsuya Hiraga’s explanation in the series is a little different. The “well” in well-being, he says, stands for “we will”: not an individual’s will but ours. As a reading of English spelling it takes some liberties, but the point comes across. Mr Hiraga also passes on a remark by Yoshiki Ishikawa, a researcher in preventive medicine, that the three great afflictions of the 21st century are boredom, loneliness and anxiety. Lawns, verandas and the sound of water may be one reply to all three. According to the series, “Well-being Forum vol.0” was held on 25 June 2019, the year before the opening.

What happened around the district once it was built? According to the ministry document, the opening raised local enthusiasm for livening up the area, and in 2021 an area-management organisation was founded. The document says the district gave local people a place to be proud of, had a good effect on sales at nearby facilities and on land prices, and that many homes nearby are now advertised as “so many minutes’ walk from GREEN SPRINGS.” When property listings name not the station, not the park, but a plaza, the plaza has become a landmark of the town.

Mr Kubo cites one more figure in the series. According to material from Tama Shinkin Bank, a local lender, if you treat Tama as Japan’s 48th prefecture (the country has 47), its economy would rank around tenth in the nation, about the same size as Saitama Prefecture. The “Tama” inside Tokyo is a match for a whole prefecture on its own. Mr Hiraga says Tachikawa was a junction for the flow of goods between central Tokyo and Okutama. Copying the western mountains into the pitch of the roofs and using Tama timber were also a way of announcing that this district stands at that junction.

The station square at the centre of a 48th prefecture. Put that way, Tachikawa starts to look a little different again.

Now, back to the mystery we started with.

The answer lay in sky and water

Why, on prime land eight minutes from the station, did nobody use even a third of the floor space?

The documents do not give a single answer. In the sky, there was the aviation law’s height limit. From the state, there was the condition of a cultural facility. The landowner, a company holding a twenty-fifth of the city, chose the value of the town over the profit of one building. And the goats had already proved that this land could be loved by the public as an “empty lot” by the station.

But is that all? I think I can see one more answer. A hundred years ago, this land was open to the sky. Aircraft needed land that was wide and flat and empty. Instead of blocking the sky with buildings, GREEN SPRINGS kept that width for people. The runway became a stream, and the angle of take-off and landing became a walking path. An aircraft company gave the breadth of the sky back to the land where aircraft once flew. That may be just a traveller’s fancy. The other half of the answer is for each of you to check, standing on the steps of the cascade.

At the start I wrote that Tachikawa is a hard town to boast about. Having read through the documents, I want to take that back. Right next to the land from which this country’s first scheduled civilian passenger flight took off, there is a garden that won a ministerial award for rooftop greening. There is the largest hall in the Tama area; endangered water plants are protected on the roof of a car park; and the plaza does not close at night. It sits at the station that serves as the junction of Tama, a region whose economy would rank around tenth in Japan. And at the very beginning of the development story, there are goats. I know of no other station square that holds so many stories in one place. There is no reason at all to be shy about boasting.

Walk a full circuit of the lawn, climb up and down the steps of the cascade, and your body has done more than you expected. The wind across the water is a little cooler than at the station. Before you notice, your shoulders have dropped and your breathing has deepened.

From Shinjuku, the JR Chuo Line runs straight to Tachikawa with no change, and from the station it is an eight-minute walk. That gets you to a river on a roof and a plaza that never closes. From the official who was sorry to see the goats go to the high-school students planting four-leaf clovers, this district has been watched over by local people all along. Come and sit on that lawn on a weekend evening.

Quiz answer

The answer is A, goats. According to the official website’s series, on land where nothing happened but weeding twice a year while it was state property, Tachihi Holdings brought in goats between winning the tender and starting construction. Being close to the station, they were popular, and even a city official was sorry to hear they would leave.

Before you go

  • Getting to Tachikawa: from Shinjuku, take the JR Chuo Line to Tachikawa Station with no change. From Kanagawa, the JR Nambu Line links Kawasaki Station and Tachikawa Station (35.5 km end to end) with no change. From the Yokohama area, you can also take the JR Yokohama Line to Hachioji and change to the Chuo Line. Check timetables and journey times on the JR East website.
  • Address: 3-1 Midoricho, Tachikawa, Tokyo.
  • From the station: go out onto the pedestrian deck at the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station, head towards the monorail’s Tachikawa-Kita Station, and walk along the passage under the monorail with the Isetan department store on your right. Go down onto Sun Sun Road and keep straight; GREEN SPRINGS is on your left. About 8 minutes on foot from JR Tachikawa Station, about 4 minutes from Tachikawa-Kita Station on the Tama Toshi Monorail (according to the official access page).
  • How long to allow: the official site gives no guide to how long to stay. According to the 2025 ministry document, the plaza is open 24 hours. If you want to combine it with PLAY! MUSEUM or an event at the hall, check times on their official sites.
  • Highlights: the biotope in the central plaza, the 120-metre cascade, the sky deck overlooking Showa Kinen Park, and the nine works of public art. Asaza flowers open only in the daytime.
  • Nearby, to combine: the Akebono Gate of Showa Kinen Park is about 10 minutes from the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station, or about 8 minutes from the Park Exit of Tachikawa-Kita Station (park’s official access page). The Antarctic and Arctic Science Museum, also in Midoricho, is about 25 minutes’ walk from the North Exit of Tachikawa Station, or 10 minutes from Takamatsu Station on the monorail (museum’s official access page). Around the North Exit you will also find the 109 works of the Faret Tachikawa public-art project, 3 minutes from the station (Faret Tachikawa Art official access page). Together they make a full day on the grounds of the old airfield.
  • Practical tips: carry an IC card such as Suica or PASMO for trains and the monorail. Opening times, events and parking fees can change, so check the official sites before you go.
  • GREEN SPRINGS official site: https://greensprings.jp/
  • Access: https://greensprings.jp/access/
  • Seasonal plants: https://greensprings.jp/plant/
  • The development story (the goats are in here): https://greensprings.jp/story/
  • PLAY! MUSEUM / PLAY! PARK: https://play2020.jp/ (check opening hours, admission and exhibition dates on the official site)
  • TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN: https://www.t-sg.jp/
  • Showa Kinen Park: https://www.showakinen-koen.jp/ (check opening hours, admission and closing days on the official site)

After your walk, back at the North Exit

On the way back from GREEN SPRINGS to the station, you may find you want to loosen up the body a little more. If so, one place to drop in is On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店), a one-minute walk from the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station, on the 3rd floor of the Etoile Building, 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo.

It is a lava-stone hot yoga studio: you practise yoga in warm rooms laid with lava stone. There are also room-temperature yoga, Pilates, women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training. With more than 25 kinds of yoga lessons, you can pick one to suit how your body feels that day.

The studio is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30. You could time your walk for the morning, when the asaza flowers open, and go straight on to work up a sweat; or listen to the water at night and then take a late lesson.

For first-timers there is a trial yoga lesson for ¥1,980 including tax, with two bath towels, one face towel and mat rental included, so you can drop in almost empty-handed. Pregnant guests cannot join lava-stone hot yoga, but room-temperature maternity yoga is available. Many of our yoga instructors speak English, and the studio’s owner, Naomi Fujita, who holds Japan’s top English qualification (Eiken Grade 1) and a perfect TOEIC score and once worked as a translator and overseas interpreter at Nomura Securities, and who lived in Alaska for three years, often helps guests from the US bases in English herself (visitors from abroad have even left Google reviews about the care they received in English); if you would like an English-friendly lesson, just say so when you book.

  • On the Shore: https://ontheshore.jp/
  • Book a trial lesson: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

On the land where the goats once grazed, water now does the talking instead of the mowing.

Cover photo: The paved central plaza of GREEN SPRINGS, ringed by trees and low buildings with deep eaves. (Photo: 突撃二号 / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

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