Tachikawa Walk: Nekawa Green Path to the Tama River, a Riverside Guide

Nekawa Kaigarazaka Bridge: the end of the green path, the start of the Tama River

The green path ends at Kaigarazaka Bridge. The city calls it the “Nekawa Kaigarazaka Bridge.”

It was built by the City of Tachikawa in 1990 under the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s “Musashino Path” plan. It is a concrete bridge designed to evoke a suspension bridge, and it is named after a nearby slope called Kaigarazaka, “Seashell Slope.” It is not actually suspended from anything. It merely evokes one. That slightly off-centre conceit softens the bridge’s expression.

From here down to the Koshu Kaido road, the Nekawa keeps its old look well, with earth banks, and is a famous cherry blossom spot, the city writes. The landscaped green path, and the old earth banks: this bridge stands at the border between them.

The lowest part of the Nekawa green path, near where it meets the Tama River, is designated part of the Koremasa-to-Akishima course of the “Musashino Path” planned by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. In other words, this bridge is also the seam that joins Tachikawa’s little green path to a much longer route along the Tama River.

The end of the green path is the start of the Tama River. Cross the bridge and the sky suddenly opens up.

The Nekawa and the Tama River in numbers

• 1.3 km — the length of the Nekawa green path. Try as you might, you cannot get lost.
• 1.7 tonnes per minute — the volume of treated wastewater the city’s guide once said was run through the channel. Now that it has switched to recirculation, this number itself is becoming a line of history.
• 2.4 km — the total length of the Path of Poems. A path that tests your reading speed more than your walking speed.
• 64.9 m — the elevation of the lowest point in Tachikawa, around Nishiki-cho 6-chome, near the Tama River. The highest point, around Nishisuna-cho 4-chome, is 124.7 m. In a city that describes itself as flat, a 60-metre difference in height is hiding.
• 138 km — the length of the Tama River. Tachikawa is just one stop along its journey. From the river’s point of view, that is.
• 367.3 m — the length of Hino Bridge, built in 1926. In the ferry days, this was the distance people crossed by boat or temporary bridge, depending on the season.

Line up the numbers and you see that the ground of Tachikawa slopes gently from the northwest down to the south, toward the Tama River. The Nekawa’s spring water and the green path’s water alike follow that slope and gather at the lowest place. And at that lowest place, until a century ago, there was no bridge.

The Tama River banks and the Hino ferry

The Tama River rises at Mount Kasatori in Koshu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, and flows into Tokyo Bay off Haneda. It is 138 kilometres long with a basin of 1,240 square kilometres, a Class A river flowing through Yamanashi, Tokyo and Kanagawa, explains the Keihin River Office of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. The office notes that as many as 13 million people visit the Tama’s riverbanks (in a fiscal 2003 survey). It has a long history of floods, and a steep gradient is another of its features. Rough, wide and heavily used: a textbook city river.

On Tachikawa’s riverbank is the Tamagawa Ryokuchi riverside park, with a municipal stadium, baseball fields and a football practice ground, linked by walking paths. The city’s “Tachikawa Walking Map” introduces a 4.5-kilometre loop that starts at the Shibasaki Gymnasium and takes in the Nekawa green path, Fusai-ji Temple, the Tama River cycling road and the Hino ferry monument. It takes about 67 minutes, the map says.

The Hino ferry. A monument carved with that name stands on a corner of the grounds of the sewage treatment plant in Nishiki-cho.

Metropolitan Road 256, which crosses Hino Bridge, was once part of National Route 20. Originally it was the old Koshu Kaido, linking Shinjuku and Kofu, one of the Five Routes (the five great highways of the Edo period). The old road passed east of the Shibasaki Gymnasium and came out at the Tama River southwest of the sewage plant in Nishiki-cho. Until the Taisho era, there was no bridge here. In winter, the dry season, a temporary bridge was put up; in summer, when the river ran high, people were carried across by ferry boat. That was the “Hino no Watashi,” the Hino ferry.

A great highway linking Edo and Kofu had no bridge. The road simply broke off here. One of the Five Routes changed its means of crossing with the seasons: a temporary bridge in winter, a boat in summer. The nation’s main artery had to wait on the river’s mood.

Later, Masuda Jun, who had worked for many years at American companies, designed Hino Bridge as a steel girder bridge, anticipating heavy motor traffic. It was completed in 1926. According to a Tokyo Metropolitan Government document compiled after a typhoon in 2019, it is a steel plate-girder bridge 367.3 metres long with 20 spans, and the main structure from its construction in 1926 was still in use at that time. A steel girder that stayed on active duty until it was nearly a hundred. The thing in Tachikawa that has endured the commuter rush for the longest is probably this bridge.

In October 1986, exactly 60 years after the Hino ferry was abolished and Hino Bridge completed, a monument to the “Hino ferry” was erected on the corner of the sewage plant’s grounds, near the old crossing, by a group of people led by the Tachikawa Tourism Association.

In the 2019 typhoon, part of a pier of Hino Bridge was damaged, and the bridge was closed for a time. The metropolitan document records that the Tama River rose 3.2 metres above its normal level and that subsidence of a pier on the Tachikawa side was confirmed. Traffic was diverted to Tachihi Bridge upstream and Ishida Bridge downstream. The ageing Hino Bridge is being rebuilt, and in May 2025 traffic was switched to a temporary bridge. The city says the new bridge will be completed around 2030. The old-timer has handed its work over to a temporary bridge and is finally getting ready to retire.

The banks by this bridge are also where Tachikawa’s summer began. The organisers of the Tachikawa Festival Showa Kinen Park Fireworks write that it started with the first Tachikawa summer fireworks festival, held in 1954 on the Tama riverbank beside Hino Bridge. Today the fireworks go up over the meadow in Showa Kinen Park, but at first they burst in the night sky above the river. Tachikawa’s summer began on the riverbank.

The steel bridge built a century ago to replace the ferry is now about to be replaced by the next bridge. The way people cross the river changes with each era. But the river itself flows on, unchanged.

Sunset and winter Fuji from Tamagawa Ryokuchi

If you walk the riverbank, go in the late afternoon.

Under a wide sky, you can see time passing. As the sun drops, the shadows of the riverbank grasses stretch, and the colour of the water slowly sinks. The outline of the western mountains darkens, until only the line where they meet the sky is glowing. The end of the day, which in the city is hidden by buildings, can be watched here right to the last.

The Kanto Regional Development Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has chosen this Tamagawa Ryokuchi as one of the “100 Views of Mount Fuji from Kanto.” From here, it says, you can see Mount Fuji rising majestically to the southwest, behind the point where the Tanzawa and Chichibu mountain masses collide. It is especially often seen on fine winter days, the description says. The nearby highlights it lists are the Hino ferry monument and the Nekawa green path.

Stand in the wind on the riverbank on a winter evening and you get chilled to the core. In that cold, Fuji’s distant silhouette stays put, refusing to dissolve into the colour of the sky. For some reason, seeing that little triangle makes me feel at ease. A mountain far beyond the prefectural border, visible from the southern edge of the city. That alone seems a kind of privilege granted to this flat city.

Every year the City of Tachikawa organises a clean-up of the Tama River. On 6 December 2025, 62 people spent about an hour and a half collecting 80 kilograms of rubbish around the Tama River cycling road and the lower reaches of the Zanbori River. It is not only the river’s power that keeps these riverbanks so wide and open.

I have walked the Nekawa green path from upstream to downstream. A spring-fed river took in the Zanbori, became a famous cherry spot, was buried, and was revived as a channel. Its water flows out into the Tama beyond Kaigarazaka Bridge. And the Tama goes on travelling, all the way to the sea off Haneda.

Here I come back to my first two questions.

Where does the green path’s water come from? The answer turned out to be: it depends on the era. Spring water from the foot of the cliff, water from the Zanbori, treated wastewater, and now a system that purifies the same water and sends it round. The origin of the water kept changing, but people’s determination to keep water flowing was never broken, not even after the river was buried in 1972. The true source of the Nekawa’s water, I think, is that determination.

Then is the river in the name Tachikawa the Tama? The city says there is no proof. The “river of the sun’s warp,” the “swift rapids,” the “mansion river” — none of the theories is decisive. But standing at Tachikawa’s southern edge, at least one thing seems certain. The lowest place in the city is beside the Tama River. Rain that falls on the plateau, water that wells up at the foot of the cliff, water that flowed down the Nekawa — in the end it all gathers in this river. All of this city’s water returns to the Tama. Whichever theory of the name is right, the river flows through the lowest, surest place in the city.

Tachikawa is thought of as a dry city: a city of station buildings, shopping and changing trains. But at its feet are a river that came back to life after it was buried, a shrine that tells of an enshrinement 1,200 years ago, a temple founded in the age of the Northern and Southern Courts, a riverbank with a view of Fuji, and the riverbank where the fireworks began. When it became a city on 1 December 1940, Tachikawa was the third city in Tokyo Prefecture, after Tokyo City and Hachioji. A town that became the second city in Tama after Hachioji still cannot make up its mind about where its own name comes from. A city that can write “we don’t know” about its own name must, I think, be a city relaxed enough to enjoy not knowing.

I stand on the riverbank and look back toward the green path. The greenery of the cliff line has become a black band in the dusk. Water seeping from the foot of that cliff once flowed down the Nekawa. I have not followed that water all the way to its end. But at least, I think, I have come this far.

Take the Nambu Line from Kawasaki and you arrive at its terminus, Tachikawa, without changing trains. The Nambu Line was originally laid to carry gravel from the Tama River. For people who live downstream on the same river, the Nekawa green path is a walk upstream of the very water flowing past their homes. From the young people of the Taisho era who planted the cherry trees to today’s citizens who clean the river, this waterside has been looked after by local hands. Some weekend, come and follow the river upstream.

Quiz answer

The answer is A. According to the City of Tachikawa, there used to be lots of crabs around here, so the area was called “ganigara,” and that became the nickname of the plaza that opened in April 2017. The city then honestly adds, “There are no crabs now.” Instead, it says, you can find a wide variety of plants and animals. The name has outlived the creatures it was named after.

Before you go

• From central Tokyo and Kanagawa: Take the JR Chuo Line from Shinjuku to Tachikawa Station with no change of trains. From Kanagawa, the JR Nambu Line links Kawasaki Station and Tachikawa Station (35.5 km in total) with no change. From the Yokohama area, you can also take the Yokohama Line to Hachioji and change to the Chuo Line. Check times and journey lengths on the official JR East site.
• Getting to the green path: The Nekawa green path (Tachikawa Park) spans Shibasaki-cho and Nishiki-cho in Tachikawa. It is about a 15-minute walk from the South Exit of JR Tachikawa Station, or about a 1-minute walk from Shibasaki-Taiikukan Station on the Tama Toshi Monorail (according to the City of Tachikawa).
• Route: Nekawa Kaigarazaka Bridge is at the lowest end of the green path, near where it meets the Tama River. This article’s route walks from the upper end of the green path to Kaigarazaka Bridge, then out onto the Tama riverbank.
• Walking times are from the city’s “Tachikawa Walking Map.” Course A, from the Shibasaki Gymnasium via the Hino ferry monument, the Tama River cycling road, the Nekawa green path and Fusai-ji Temple and back, is 4.5 km, about 67 minutes. Course D, from the Shibasaki Gymnasium along the green path to Fusai-ji, past the Yamanaka-zaka Jizo hall to the History and Folklore Museum, is about 2.6 km, about 39 minutes. Both are calculated at 4 km/h.
• Combine it with: Fusai-ji Temple and Suwa Shrine, the subjects of another article in this series, are within walking distance of the green path. On the way back, take the Tama Toshi Monorail from Shibasaki-Taiikukan Station and you will see the Tama River from the train as it crosses Tachihi Bridge (see our monorail article).
• Seasons: For spring cherry blossoms, see the old Somei-Yoshino trees on the green path and the earth-banked stretch from Kaigarazaka Bridge to the Koshu Kaido. On a fine winter afternoon, look southwest from Tamagawa Ryokuchi for Fuji.
• Safety: Stay away from the Tama riverbank when the river is high. You can check water levels and river conditions on the disaster-prevention information of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the City of Tachikawa.
• Hino Bridge is being rebuilt, and since May 2025 traffic has used a temporary bridge. Check the latest restrictions with the City of Tachikawa and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
• Etiquette: At Sawa Inari and the Yamanaka-zaka Jizo hall, you are among homes and memorials; keep your voice down. Leave the plants and creatures of the green path and conservation area as you find them.
• Practical tips: Carry an IC transport card such as Suica or PASMO; it works on JR and the monorail.
• City of Tachikawa, “Tachikawa Park” (Japanese): https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/sports/1002924/1003007.html
• City of Tachikawa, “Walking Courses: 2. From Yagawa toward the Tama River” (Japanese): https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/bunka/1004244/1004848/1004890.html
• MLIT Kanto Regional Development Bureau, “100 Views of Mount Fuji from Kanto: Tamagawa Ryokuchi” (Japanese): https://www.ktr.mlit.go.jp/chiiki/fujimi0057.html

After the waterside, at the North Exit of Tachikawa Station

From the Tama River back to Tachikawa Station, you climb the river terrace and head north. When you reach the South Exit, go through the station to the North Exit. One minute’s walk from there, on the third floor of the Etoile Building at 2-14-10 Akebonocho, is On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店).

It is a hot yoga studio heated by lava-stone plates. It also offers room-temperature yoga, Pilates, women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training, with more than 25 kinds of yoga lesson.

It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30. Even if you stay on the riverbank to watch the sun go down, there is still time to drop in. Slowly loosening a body chilled by the winter river wind in the heat of lava stone is one way to close a day.

If it is your first time, there is a trial yoga lesson for ¥1,980 including tax, with two bath towels, one face towel and a yoga mat included in the rental. Even if you have walked here with next to nothing, you can go straight in.

Pregnant guests cannot take part in 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 lesson booking: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

In a warm room, I think back over the story of a river that began as spring water. Water always flows to the lower ground.

Cover photo: The water play area of the Nekawa green path in Tachikawa Park: a boardwalk follows the stream, reflecting fresh leaves. (Photo: 根川孝太郎 / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

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