Tachikawa Travel Guide: Things to Do, Walks and History West of Tokyo

Things to Do in Tachikawa by Interest: Rides, Kids, Rainy Days, Nights and Food

Rides and the Sky

Tachikawa’s sky remembers aircraft. Ishikawajima Aircraft Manufacturing, founded in 1924 and later called Tachikawa Aircraft, built the “Red Dragonfly” trainer and the “Hayabusa” fighter. The company no longer makes aircraft but still carries the character for “fly” (飛, hi) in its name — Tachihi — and owns about one twenty-fifth of the land in the city. (Walking Tachihi, in Japanese)

What runs through the air today is the Tama Monorail: 16.0 kilometres, 19 stations. The section between Tachikawa-Kita and Kamikitadai opened in 1998, and in 2000 it was extended to Tama Center. Ride south from Tachikawa-Minami and you cross the Tama River on the Tachihi Bridge. (Riding the Tama Monorail)

On the ground, there are bicycles. Showa Kinen Park has a cycling course of about 14 kilometres, and a cycling road runs along the Tama River. (Cycling in Tachikawa, in Japanese) In Akebono-cho there is also a keirin velodrome, where professional bicycle races are held and wagered on. According to the city history newsletter, in an era when many local governments went into keirin to fund post-war reconstruction, Tachikawa’s city assembly adopted a petition for a cycling stadium in 1949, and permission to open it came in 1951. In December 2016 the velodrome reopened after renovation. (Tachikawa Keirin, in Japanese)

With Children

With children, start with the sheer size of Showa Kinen Park. Minna no Harappa (“everyone’s meadow”) measures about 400 metres north to south and 300 metres east to west: big enough that you will go hoarse calling back a child who has started to run. PLAY! PARK at GREEN SPRINGS is an indoor playground, with an area reserved for parents with children under three.

On the second floor of the Tachikawa Children’s Future Center in Nishiki-cho is Tachikawa Manga Park. Tokyo’s official tourism site describes its collection as about 40,000 manga. (Tachikawa Manga Park, in Japanese)

The Tachikawa Disaster Prevention Center in Izumi-cho is run by the Tokyo Fire Department. It stands next to Tachikawa Fire Station, admission is free, and it has an earthquake-simulation room. The old airfield land also holds the national wide-area disaster-response base. In the plan for emergency measures after an earthquake directly under the capital, compiled in July 2026 by the secretariat of the national Central Disaster Management Council, Camp Tachikawa of the Ground Self-Defense Force is named as one of the hubs for flying patients out by air. The plan also notes that if a major earthquake strikes south of central Tokyo, the area around Camp Tachikawa is likely to be relatively undamaged, with the surrounding hospitals still working. In an emergency, the flat land of the airfield town goes over to the side that holds Tokyo up. To read about the two together, see the Disaster Prevention Center and the wide-area base.

On a Rainy Day

Rainy-day Tachikawa has plenty of sights under a roof. The Antarctic and Arctic Science Museum is free; you can touch Antarctic ice and watch aurora footage in a dome four metres across. There is even a real large snow vehicle that was used for a round trip to the South Pole. It is closed on Sundays, Mondays, national holidays and some other days, so check before you plan. (The Antarctic and Arctic Science Museum and Midori-cho’s Research District)

PLAY! MUSEUM at GREEN SPRINGS combines a museum and a play space. Tachikawa Manga Park is indoors too. And then the cinemas. Count from the Tachikawa Kinema mentioned on the previous page and the town’s film lovers have nearly a century of practice. (Cinema City and the Movie Town, in Japanese)

Tachikawa at Night

Tachikawa at night is interesting in the way it places its lights. At Faret Tachikawa, Tatsuo Miyajima’s LED work “Luna” stands as a ventilation tower, its 144 numerals cycling from 1 to 9. Zero never appears. The fastest change every tenth of a second, the slowest once an hour. GREEN SPRINGS is a plaza open 24 hours a day, with sculptures lit up at night. In autumn, Showa Kinen Park has held illuminations of its yellow and red leaves since 2019. There is a local blog that has been recording night walks for years; its serial numbers have passed 4,900, and among the entries is one that calls “beautiful” the complex terrain made by the gentle undulations of the Tachikawa escarpment and the warping of its guardrails. The face of Tachikawa that daytime guidebooks leave out really is there, on the night-time terraces. The little alleys of bars around the station I leave to a separate piece, Night Alleys.

Eating

Tachikawa’s specialty is Tokyo udo, a tall, white, aromatic stalk vegetable. Growing it began in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when silk farming was in decline, as a source of income in the idle winter months, and it took off in earnest in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The farmers of Tachikawa in those years chose, instead of mulberry leaves for silkworms, to grow white stems in the dark underground. Today those white stems are Tokyo’s top crop of their kind, and have even been turned into pastry. Inside the udo pits the temperature is kept at about 18 to 20 degrees Celsius all year, and the people who work there are said to go down checking for oxygen with the flame of a candle, to avoid suffocation. There cannot be many farms in Tokyo still using a candle as a safety check. The season runs from mid-December to April, and restaurants in the city have created dishes such as udo ramen. The city’s certified souvenirs, branded “Tachikawa no Taikoban” (Tachikawa’s seal of approval), include udo pie and udo dressing. (The Story of Tokyo Udo, in Japanese.) For ramen and other noodles, see Tachikawa’s Noodles.

Festivals and Seasons

Tachikawa’s year has fixed high points. In February, the udo competition. In spring, the cherry blossoms of the Negawa and the Tamagawa Aqueduct. In summer, the fireworks at Showa Kinen Park, and the August grand festival of Suwa Shrine, with lion dancers and great drums. In autumn, the park’s Cosmos Festival (September–October) and its Autumn Leaves Festival (November), and at Faret Tachikawa, Museum Days in spring and autumn. In winter, udo grows in its underground pits, and on clear days Mt. Fuji shows itself beyond the Tama River. (Festivals and Fireworks, in Japanese)

By now the map of what Tachikawa holds is roughly drawn. So how should you actually walk it? Here are four routes.

Four Model Walks for a Day in Tachikawa

The times below are simply the official walking estimates added together. They do not include detours or rests. In Tachikawa, I should confess in advance, the detours tend to become the main event.

Walk 1: Half a Day North of the Station

Route: JR Tachikawa Station North Exit → Faret Tachikawa → GREEN SPRINGS → Showa Kinen Park, Akebono Gate (Midori no Bunka Zone) → Tama Monorail Tachikawa-Kita Station → Takamatsu Station → Antarctic and Arctic Science Museum

1. From the North Exit, take the elevated pedestrian deck to Faret Tachikawa, three minutes from the station. The 109 works are scattered around the blocks, so walk slowly and hunt for them.
2. Following the official directions from GREEN SPRINGS, go from the North Exit deck along the walkway beneath the monorail, come down onto Sun Sun Road and keep straight on; GREEN SPRINGS is on your left, about eight minutes from the station. Climb to the second-level plaza to the sound of the cascade.
3. The park’s Akebono Gate is about ten minutes from the North Exit. Just inside, the Midori no Bunka (“green culture”) Zone is free to enter, and you can walk on the rooftop garden of the Hana Midori Culture Center, a building covered in greenery.
4. From Tachikawa-Kita, take the Tama Monorail one stop to Takamatsu. The Science Museum is a ten-minute walk from there (about 25 minutes on foot from the North Exit of Tachikawa Station).

In half a day north of the station you get art, greenery, a ride through the air and Antarctic ice. It is also a route that walks steadily north across the old airfield. On Sundays and Mondays, when the museum is closed, skip step 4 and spend longer in the park.

Walk 2: A Full Day Built Around Showa Kinen Park

Route: JR Ome Line Nishi-Tachikawa Station → Nishi-Tachikawa Gate → Waterfowl Pond → Minna no Harappa → Japanese Garden → Komorebi no Sato → Akebono Gate → JR Tachikawa Station North Exit

1. From Nishi-Tachikawa Station to the Nishi-Tachikawa Gate is about two minutes. Step out of the station and you are at the park.
2. Circle the Waterfowl Pond, about five hectares of water, then head to Minna no Harappa in the centre. The great zelkova tree in the middle stood here before the park existed. The meadow was designed around this one tree.
3. Walk around the pond of the Japanese Garden, about six hectares and said to be the largest made in the Tokyo region since the war.
4. Visit Komorebi no Sato, a re-creation of a Musashino farming village of the late 1950s and early 1960s, with a farmhouse and a gatehouse moved here.
5. Leave by the Akebono Gate; Tachikawa Station North Exit is about ten minutes away.

The park is too big to walk in a day, so feel free to mix in some wheels. According to the official guide, the train-shaped Park Train makes a full circuit in about 50 to 60 minutes. With a rental bicycle you can ride the cycling course of about 14 kilometres. Check the park’s official flower updates for what is in bloom before you go. On the north side of the park is Minore Tachikawa, a farm shop run by JA Tokyo Midori; in winter or spring you may come across Tokyo udo.

Walk 3: Half a Day of Water and History in the South

Route: JR Tachikawa Station South Exit → Suwa Shrine → the great zelkova of Hachiman Shrine → Tansu Yokocho → Fusai-ji Temple → Negawa Greenway → Kaigarazaka Bridge → Tama River (Hino Ferry Monument) → Tama Monorail Shibasaki-Taiikukan Station

1. Suwa Shrine is ten minutes on foot from the station: the old shrine of Shibasaki, said to have received its deity in 811.
2. About 200 metres west of the shrine’s south torii gate stands the great zelkova of Hachiman Shrine. The road from there to Fusai-ji was called “Tansu Yokocho” (Chest-of-Drawers Lane) because many cabinetmakers lived there, and it flourished as the main street of Shibasaki Village.
3. At Fusai-ji, see the shelter that houses the National Treasure stone pillar. The temple stands on top of the Tama River terrace, and in spring you look down on the cherry trees along the Negawa.
4. Go down the terrace to the Negawa Greenway. Follow the paddling pools and springs to the Kaigarazaka Bridge, a concrete bridge said to have been designed with a suspension bridge in mind. It is not suspended.
5. Come out on the Tama riverbank at the Hino Ferry Monument. Until the Taisho era (1912–1926) there was no bridge here; in winter people built a temporary one, and in summer they were carried across by ferry boat.
6. To return, take the monorail from Shibasaki-Taiikukan Station, about one minute’s walk from Tachikawa Park.

Part of this route overlaps with Course A of the city’s walking map (about 4.5 kilometres from Shibasaki Gymnasium past the waterside and Fusai-ji, taking about 67 minutes). It is the backbone of the south side: a shrine, a temple and a river in half a day.

Walk 4: Half a Day by the Tamagawa Aqueduct and Sunagawa in the North

Route: Tama Monorail Tamagawa-Josui Station → Tamagawa Aqueduct greenway → Azusami Tenjin Shrine → Kawagoemichi Ryokuchi Old Farmhouse Garden

1. From Tachikawa-Kita, ride the monorail north and get off at Tamagawa-Josui. The aqueduct flows east–west just south of the station, and its banks are a greenway.
2. Walk along the aqueduct into the old village of Sunagawa. Here is Azusami Tenjin Shrine, said to have been founded as a branch shrine in 1629. Within its grounds, Kokage Shrine once appeared in a magazine story about a celebrity’s missing cat that came home after the owner prayed there, and tourist guides usually introduce it as the “Cat-Returning Shrine.”
3. Continue to the Kawagoemichi Ryokuchi Old Farmhouse Garden, where the Kobayashi family house, a thatched farmhouse from the late Edo period, has been relocated.

The city’s walking map gives this route as Course C, “Tamagawa-Josui Station – Azusami Tenjin Shrine – Old Farmhouse Garden,” about 5.7 kilometres and about 86 minutes. However, the city has announced that the farmhouse garden is scheduled to close from 1 June 2026 to 31 March 2027 while its facilities are renovated. While it is closed, you might extend your walk to Konpira-yama, a stop on one of the city’s walking courses. It is about ten metres high, and the city’s walking map calls it “Tachikawa’s only mountain.” I probably need not state the time to the summit.

The Wanderer’s Quiz

In 1922, the year Tachikawa Airfield opened, by what percentage did the population of Tachikawa Village grow over the year before?

• A: about 8%
• B: about 28%
• C: about 108%

The answer comes near the end of this page.