Ome Day Trip from Tachikawa: Showa Retro Walk, Things to Do, History

“Gravel looks more important than people”: the Ome Line that carried stone

According to railway records, in 1908 the Ome Railway widened its track to 1,067 millimetres and was freed from the transfers at Tachikawa. In 1923 the line between Tachikawa and Futamatao was electrified, and in 1929, the same year the company renamed itself the Ome Electric Railway, the track reached Mitake Station. The last terminus of the private railway that began in Tachikawa was Mitake.

In 1944 the Ome Electric Railway was bought by the state, along with the Nambu Railway and the Itsukaichi Railway, and became the national railways’ Ome Line. The same year, the section beyond Mitake opened as well.

The company that had been building that section was the Okutama Electric Railway, today called Okutama Kogyo. According to the company’s official history, the Okutama Electric Railway was created in 1937 to carry limestone and spent seven years laying 9.76 kilometres of railway, but soon after completion the line was bought by the government, beginning service in July 1944 as part of the national Ome Line. The freight trains carrying limestone from the works of the renamed Okutama Kogyo were, it says, the defining sight of the Ome Line until 1998.

And where is Okutama Kogyo’s head office? Its company profile says: “1-18-2 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo.”

That is just by the North Exit of Tachikawa Station. A company that quarries stone in the Okutama mountains has its head office in Tachikawa. More than 130 years after that Meiji letter, the tie between mountain stone and Tachikawa has still not been cut.

Because the Ome Line was originally built to carry limestone, freight trains used to be the stars of its timetable. Railway histories record that passengers mocked it with a verse: “On the Ome Line / gravel looks more important / than people do.” In Japanese it falls neatly into the 5-7-5 rhythm of a haiku, which makes it funnier. The Ome Line, on the receiving end, made no reply and went on silently carrying stone.

Ome City’s “History of the City in Photographs” includes, for 1998, a picture captioned “The last lime train runs.” It was not so very long ago that wagons dusted with white powder stopped passing alongside Tachikawa Station.

The locomotive that once pulled those lime trains is still in Ome.

Ome Railway Park and the locomotive that became an Important Cultural Property

Climb the hill north of the station and you reach Ome Railway Park. It was opened in 1962 by what was then Japanese National Railways, in a corner of Nagayama Park, as part of the celebrations for the 90th anniversary of railways in Japan. Ome City’s “History of the City in Photographs” lists the park under 1962 too.

Here stands an electric locomotive designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan: ED16 No. 1. According to Ome City, it was a small electric locomotive for steep lines and freight trains, designed jointly by the Ministry of Railways and private industry, and built in 1931. It worked on the Ome and Itsukaichi lines and elsewhere, hauling wagons loaded with limestone, until it was retired in 1980 and preserved in this park.

Which means this locomotive must have travelled back and forth many times along the line to Tachikawa with white stone on its back. Now it spends a quiet retirement under a roof. Not many locomotives have been made Important Cultural Properties. A modest workhorse that spent its life pulling freight ends up treated like a national treasure. One would like to think people’s lives can be rewarded like that too.

The park also has steam locomotives and a Shinkansen 0 Series car. The facility is reported to have reopened in spring 2026 after long renovation work. Railway histories also record that in 2010 a tortoiseshell cat that had made the park its home was appointed the park’s director. So there was a time when an Important Cultural Property locomotive was being supervised by a cat.

Now that cats have come up, let us go down into the town. Ome has more stories of cats and of movies.

The town of movie signboards: the final curtain, and the cats

The shopping streets along the old Ome Kaido, south of Ome Station, have been known as a “Showa retro town.” (The Showa era ran from 1926 to 1989, and “Showa retro” is the Japanese term for nostalgia for its middle decades.) Their highlight was the hand-painted signboards for old Japanese and foreign films.

According to a Nikkan Sports article from October 2018, the signboards were painted by Kubo Bankan, the only movie signboard painter in the city, and 20 large boards hung on the outer walls of shops and elsewhere. The first was put up in 1994, and he painted a new one and swapped it in roughly once every three years.

Mr Kubo died in February 2018, and the supply of new boards stopped. Concerns had already been raised about the danger of the ageing boards. Then, in September the same year, Typhoon No. 24 blew several of them away. The Sumie-cho shopping street association, which looked after the boards, decided to take them down and finished the work by 21 October. A senior member of the association said that the signboards had first gone up at the start of the Heisei era and finished their role at its end.

When one painter’s brush stopped, the face of the town changed. The signboards belonged to the street, but just as much, they were one man’s work.

The article has another surprising story. In 2003 a museum dedicated to the manga artist Akatsuka Fujio opened in the town. Akatsuka had no connection with Ome, but he had worked as a movie signboard painter when young, became interested in Ome as it promoted itself as “the town of movie signboards,” and agreed to the museum. The signboards brought in a cartoonist. The museum is recorded as having closed in March 2020.

After the signboards were gone, what the association came up with as the town’s new face was cats. According to the article, Ome had long been a centre of silkworm-raising, and cats were kept and loved as the animals that got rid of the rats that ate the silkworms and the pupae in their cocoons. Pictures and figures of cats by local artists were placed around the town.

Here I am reminded of Sunagawa in Tachikawa. The Kokage Shrine at Ryusen-ji temple, near the Tamagawa Aqueduct, is also called the “cat-returning shrine.” Tachikawa City gave as one explanation that, because rats ate the cocoons in silkworm-raising, the shrine issued talismans with pictures of cats to keep rats away. The northern villages of Tachikawa and the post town of Ome raised the same silkworms, were plagued by the same rats, and relied on the same cats. Through cats, the memory of silkworm-raising in the Tama area connects the two towns.

Still, the traces of the movies did not vanish all at once. Movie signboards in the station concourse are recorded as still being on display as of 2019. On the shopping street is the Showa Retro Goods Museum, displaying sweet and medicine packaging, toys and posters from roughly the late 1950s to the late 1960s. According to the Ome Tourism Association, it occupies a wooden building that used to be a furniture shop, and on the first floor up there are materials showing that the origin of “Yuki-onna” (“The Snow Woman”), a ghost story by Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo), lay in a legend handed down in Ome. Upstairs from the Showa sweet boxes, the Snow Woman. My respects to whoever thought of that combination. It is open on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.

And the movies themselves have come back. According to the tourism association, on 4 June 2021 a cinema opened in Ome for the first time in about 50 years. It is in a renovated building registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan, and is said to be the only wooden cinema in Tokyo. The signboards disappeared from the town of signboards, and a real cinema came back instead. As plots go, not bad.

Showa-era Ome, and the people who changed trains at Tachikawa

“For the first time in about 50 years” means, turned around, that Ome had cinemas until the middle of the Showa era.

The “History of the City in Photographs” published by Ome City begins with the ceremony marking the city’s founding in 1951. According to the city, Ome was then the 262nd city in Japan and the fifth in Tokyo, with a population of 36,094. Tachikawa became a city in 1940, so Ome became a city eleven years after Tachikawa.

Around the second picture in the series is one captioned “Ome Kinema, around 1952.” Then come Ome Station front in 1961, the completion of the Ome Civic Hall in 1966, the level crossing at Honcho in 1967 and the first Ome Marathon the same year. Just reading the captions, the town’s Showa era rises up in front of you. The Civic Hall is recorded as having been the base for the city’s cultural life, films and plays, but it closed in March 2017 because of its age and has been rebuilt as a cultural exchange centre.

What the Showa Retro Goods Museum displays are precisely the sweet and medicine boxes of this period. For older visitors, these are shelves to point at and say, “Yes, we had that!” For younger ones, they are a peek into their grandparents’ kitchen.

Then: people heading from Ome to central Tokyo changed trains at Tachikawa. According to railway histories, through trains from Ome to Tokyo Station without a change began in June 1949, with a single up train in the morning. Before that, ordinary Ome Line trains terminated at Tachikawa, and people crossed the platform at Tachikawa to board the Chuo Line. In the late 1950s and early 1960s the line between Ozaku and Higashi-Ome was double-tracked, Ome City’s chronology says. Every morning, the Ome Line platforms at Tachikawa echoed with the footsteps of people coming out from the town of stripes and the town of stone.

Now: twelve-car trains with double-decker Green Cars (first-class cars) run between Tachikawa and Ome. Tachikawa, once the station where you changed, remains the “gateway to Tokyo” for Ome people today. The only thing that has changed is whether they have to change.

Post-town festivals, and the traffic with Tachikawa

Ome’s busiest days of the year are 2 and 3 May, the Ome Taisai festival. It is the festival of Sumiyoshi Shrine, and according to the encyclopedias, it is said to have begun when the five parishioner districts held a festival in 1513 to celebrate the rebuilding of the worship hall; floats have been pulled since 1872. On the main festival day, a wide area around the station is closed to traffic and twelve floats in all parade along the old highway. When two floats meet head-on, a “seriai” begins, a contest of festival music.

In January there is a daruma market as well. The calendar of events put out by a local sake brewery lists the Ome Daruma Market and the Ome Taisai side by side. The post town still divides its year by the calendar of markets and festivals.

Tachikawa and Ome turn up side by side in other places too. At the end of the Meiji era, when Tokyo Prefecture was choosing the site of the Second Prefectural Middle School, Ome town was among the candidates, alongside Hachioji and Fuchu. The one chosen was Tachikawa village, which had no entertainment district and offered a good environment for study. I wrote about this in the article on Tachikawa Station. Ome had its requested railway refused, and then lost the middle school to Tachikawa. It looks like a rather one-sided relationship, but I found no record, in my research, of Ome people bearing Tachikawa a grudge.

The two towns are linked underground as well. The Tachikawa Fault Zone, evaluated by Japan’s national Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion, runs from Naguri in Saitama Prefecture through Ome City and Tachikawa City to Fuchu City. It carries Tachikawa’s name, but its northern end lies towards Ome. Not the happiest of ties, but one worth knowing about.

On the train back to Tachikawa

I go through the underpass at Ome Station and stand on the platform for Tachikawa.

The 53 people who wrote that Meiji letter can hardly have imagined double-decker Green Cars running on their line 130 years later. Since March 2025, Green Car service has operated between Tachikawa and Ome. A track laid for stone now carries people in comfortable seats. For a line once mocked with “gravel looks more important than people,” that is quite a promotion.

At first I thought the Ome Line was a branch that grew out from Tachikawa. Following its story, I found it was the other way round. It was a line drawn by the people of a mountain town, with white stone loaded on its back, towards a station on the flat plateau. Tachikawa Station was the one that received it. Refused, they set up a company of their own anyway, started with a narrow track, transferred their stone at Tachikawa, and eventually widened the line. That Tachikawa Station became a “station where lines meet” owes something to Ome’s sheer determination.

The town of the plum that never ripened went on putting down roots without ever ripening. As the train pulls out, the mountains slowly recede, and then Tachikawa’s flat sky draws near.

The quiz answer

The answer is (B), Tachikawa. To save on construction costs, the Ome Railway opened with a narrow gauge of about 762 millimetres. As a result, once limestone transport got going in earnest, transshipment work became necessary at Tachikawa, where the line connected with the Kobu Railway. The gauge is recorded as having been widened to 1,067 millimetres in 1908.

Before you go

• Getting there: from JR Tachikawa Station, about 30 minutes on the Ome Line to Ome Station (according to Musashi Mitake Shrine’s access page). Check times and train destinations in that day’s timetable.
• From Shinjuku: about an hour, by a Chuo Line Rapid bound for Ome, or by changing to the Ome Line at Tachikawa (according to the Ome Tourism Association).
• Carry an IC card such as Suica or PASMO; it works on the trains and saves buying tickets.
• Old Inaba Residence: 499 Morishitacho, Ome. About 10 minutes’ walk from JR Ome Station. Closed Mondays (or the next weekday if Monday is a public holiday). Open 10:00–17:00 from April to September and 10:00–16:00 from October to March (according to Ome City): https://www.city.ome.tokyo.jp/site/provincial-history-museum/2730.html
• Ome Municipal Museum of Local History (home of the Ome-jima samples and the jibata loom): closed since 1 April 2025. Check the city’s page for news of reopening: https://www.city.ome.tokyo.jp/site/provincial-history-museum/
• Ome Railway Park (ED16 No. 1 electric locomotive): 2-155 Katsunuma, Ome. 15 minutes’ walk from JR Ome Station (according to Ome City). Check opening days, hours and admission in the official information: https://www.city.ome.tokyo.jp/site/provincial-history-museum/3116.html
• Showa Retro Goods Museum: open Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays (according to the Ome Tourism Association): https://www.omekanko.gr.jp/spot/01901/
• Kongo-ji Temple (Masakado’s Vow Plum): about 15 minutes’ walk from Ome Station. The story of Ome’s name is on the city’s page: https://www.city.ome.tokyo.jp/site/ome-style/15844.html . Temple grounds are places of worship; behave quietly.
• General sightseeing and model courses: Ome Tourism Association https://www.omekanko.gr.jp/
• To combine: continue on the same Ome Line to Mitake Station for Mount Mitake and Mitake Valley (see this series’ Mitake article). Back in Tachikawa, read this alongside the history of Tachikawa Station, which received the Ome Railway, and the Kokage Shrine in Sunagawa with its silkworm-and-cat connection (in the Tamagawa Aqueduct article), and you will see both ends of the line.

On the way home: Tachikawa Station North Exit

Feet that have walked Ome’s slopes and its old highway suddenly feel heavy the moment you sit down on the train home. The mountain town looks flat, but it is full of slopes.

Back at Tachikawa Station, On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店) is a one-minute walk from the North Exit, on the 3rd floor of the Etoile Building, 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo. By coincidence, it is in the same Akebonocho as the head office of the company that quarries stone at the far end of the Ome Line. It is a hot yoga studio where classes are held on heated lava stone, and alongside room-temperature yoga and Pilates there is women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training. There are more than 25 kinds of yoga lessons alone.

It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30, so even after a full day in Ome and an evening train back, there is plenty of time.

A trial yoga lesson for first-timers costs ¥1,980 (tax included), including rental of two bath towels, one face towel and a mat, so you can drop in on the way back from your walk with almost nothing in your hands. Pregnant guests cannot join the 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.

Studio information: https://ontheshore.jp/ ; trial booking: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

At the station the people of Ome were trying to reach 130 years ago, you loosen your body at the end of the day. That, too, is one way to use the end of the Ome Line.

Cover photo: A hand-painted movie signboard on an Ome street corner in 2015; the street signboards were removed in 2018. (Photo: Stephen Kelly from San Francisco, CA, USA / CC BY 2.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

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