Tachikawa Oni Park Guide: A Red Demon Slide and Trains for Kids

A park where you can watch the trains: the back of Tachikawa Station

Tokyo Location Box sums up the park’s selling points like this: the demon slide makes a big impact; the tracks are close, so trains passing back and forth come into the background behind the play equipment.

As a guide for film crews, that is enough. For children, though, the trains are hardly background. Demon and train arrive in the same frame at the same moment.

Nippon Tabi Magazine writes that the JR Chuo Main Line and the Nambu Line run right beside the park. The parent’s blog says that while you play in the park the sound of trains never stops, and that sometimes they spend the whole time watching trains from the nearby footbridge. The same blog introduces the park as one where you can see Chuo Line and Nambu Line trains clearly — irresistible for small children who love trains. A writer for a local information site recommends the view from the Nishikicho footbridge next to the park, and describes children pointing as they slide down: “Look, a train!” In the Sanpo no Tatsujin article, too, someone remarks that you can see freight trains on the tracks from inside the park.

Orange Chuo Line trains, Nambu Line trains, and now and then a locomotive hauling a long string of freight wagons, leaving a low growl as it heads west or east. Slide down the demon, look up at the train, climb the steps again. A child’s day is made of round trips like that.

The station behind him is far bigger than a child imagines. According to Tachikawa’s statistical yearbook, JR Tachikawa Station handled 154,091 boarding passengers a day in fiscal 2024. In JR East’s station ranking for fiscal 2024 — a table that begins Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, Tokyo, Yokohama, Shibuya — Tachikawa is fourteenth. Every one of the thirteen stations above it is in Tokyo’s 23 central wards or in a big city such as Yokohama, Omiya or Kawasaki. No station outside the 23 wards of Tokyo on that table has more people boarding than Tachikawa.

Behind the demon’s back, more people board JR trains every day than at any other JR station in Tokyo outside the 23 wards.

Each line has its own history. According to the city’s timeline, the Ome, Nambu and Itsukaichi lines were each originally separate private railways, and in 1944 they were all bought up by the state. Lines that once belonged to different companies converge on one station from all directions. The bundle of tracks the demon is watching is the knot that ties that history together. If a child asks, “Why do so many trains go past?”, the answer is: because they all used to belong to different companies. That will probably only make things more confusing.

The demon on screen, the demon of the shopping street

Oni Park has another face — the one on screen.

Tachikawa Kanko Navi says the park appears in Saint Young Men (聖☆おにいさん), a manga that was also made into an animated film, including in scenes where the heroes, Buddha and Jesus, go jogging — and that it has also been a filming location for the TV dramas Gokusen and Nagi’s Long Vacation (凪のお暇). Two saints sharing a cheap apartment in Tachikawa jog past a demon. The founders of Buddhism and Christianity, jogging in front of a Japanese ogre. In the whole history of religion, it is hard to find a slide with a more international clientele.

There seems to be a reason for its popularity as a location. Tokyo Location Box tags the park’s atmosphere “Showa retro”. In the Sanpo no Tatsujin article, a member of Tachikawa Location Service — the organisation the city entrusts with handling film shoots — recalls that the South Exit side of the station used to be a place people were a little reluctant to visit, and that after the park became famous as a Gokusen location it turned into something like a pilgrimage site for rowdy youths. Things have calmed down a great deal since, the article reports, and now nursery-school children come to play here in the daytime.

One park, a night face and a day face. The demon has shown both of them the same expression.

The shopping street did not leave the demon alone either. The website of the Tachikawa federation of shopping streets keeps a record of “Oni-Uma Fes”, a food-tour event organised by the Nishiki shopping street. (Oni-umai, literally “demon-tasty”, is Japanese slang for “insanely delicious” — the demon earns his keep here too.) At the February 2018 edition, a food market with stalls from the street’s shops and a stage with magicians and comedians were held at Oni Park on 25 February. Using a participating shop got you a trading card, and the first fifty people to collect three cards received a “demon strap”.

The next year, when the TV drama Nagi’s Long Vacation aired, the same federation’s site announced a “Nagi-loss Recovery Fes” at Oni Park, the drama’s filming location. Gather the people left lonely by the end of a drama at the park with the demon, and console them. Shopping-street thinking is always resilient.

The ones who raised this demon into their mascot were neither the city office nor the tourism business. They were the people who raise their shutters every morning and have kept their shops going in Nishikicho.

According to Sanpo no Tatsujin, a bean-throwing event is also held at setsubun. (On Setsubun, in early February, Japanese families throw roasted soybeans while shouting “Demons out, good luck in!”) Throwing beans in front of the demon takes nerve. The concrete demon will not run away when pelted, and probably does not feel a thing. The Showa-retro blogger wrote that on Setsubun, 3 February each year, there is apparently a sweet-scattering event instead of bean-scattering. Throwing to the children rather than at the demon probably makes the people doing the catching a lot keener.

The same blogger, having checked the back of the demon’s head too, reported that it is nothing special, and wished they had at least made it a blue demon or done something clever. A red demon in front, a blue demon behind. Put that way, I would rather like to see it.

The demon has been looked after. In March 2022 the local news site “Iine! Tachikawa” reported that renovation work at Oni Park had finished, leaving the sand and benches spotless. In 2024 Tama Tebako Net recorded a notice saying that for about a week from 26 June 2024 (Reiwa 6), the demon slide, sandpit and swings could not be used, because of work to get rid of puddles around the play equipment. The writer confessed to suspecting for a moment that the puddles were “the demon’s doing”, and apologised to Mr Oni. Local people always seem slightly deferential towards the demon.

Tachikawa also had a rock band called Akai Koen — “Red Park”. It was a girls’ band formed in 2010 that broke up in 2021, and its original members were all from Tachikawa. The band apparently meant to call itself “Kaiju Koen” (“Monster Park”), but the name was taken, so it became “Red Park”. The city’s timeline records that in 2014, as an “Akai Koen give-back-to-the-hometown project”, red benches were placed in the plaza of the Children’s Future Center. A red park that could not become a monster, and a park where a red demon has always lived. Tachikawa seems to have a thing for red parks.

Walking Tachikawa with children: counting the parks

Leaving Oni Park, where should you go with children in Tachikawa? First, I counted how many parks Tachikawa has.

According to the 2025 edition of the city’s statistical yearbook, as of 1 April 2024 Tachikawa had 79 small neighbourhood parks (gaiku koen) near homes, totalling about 10.7 hectares; 7 district parks; 1 area park; 2 comprehensive parks; 4 plaza parks; and 8 green spaces. There are also 157 parks that are not officially “urban parks”. Add them up and there are more than 250 places in the city with “park” or “green space” in their name.

Nishikicho alone, where Oni Park is, has 5 neighbourhood parks with a combined area of 9,141 square metres. On top of that there is a large comprehensive park, Tachikawa Park. The baseball ground at Tachikawa Park and the Nekawa greenway are covered in other articles in this series.

And of course, in the middle of the city is Showa Kinen Park. The same yearbook carries visitor numbers compiled by the national park office: 3,509,564 in fiscal 2024. A note under the table says that since fiscal 2018 admission for children has been free, so child visitors are counted under “free”. Children can enter the huge national park without paying. For a walk with kids, you could not ask for a more reliable backdrop. How to explore Showa Kinen Park is in another article.

The city’s timeline also records the history of making places for children. In 1972 the Fujimi Children’s Hall opened; the timeline calls it “Children’s Hall No. 1”. In 1997, in the same Nishikicho as Oni Park, the Nishiki Children’s Hall and an after-school club opened. In 2012 the Tachikawa Children’s Future Center opened on the former City Hall site. The town hall the demon may once have been guarding is now a building for children. Perhaps the demon’s job is not over after all.

Some days the parks put on a different face. A Tokyo Metropolitan Government document on children’s policy records that in 2023 a citizens’ group, the Tachikawa Adventure Playground Association, ran “play parks” in three of the city’s parks: Sunagawa Park, Midoricho-kita Park, and the Ganigara Plaza in Tachikawa Park. Tarzan ropes, beigoma spinning tops, water play, building cardboard bases, lighting fires in a stone hearth. The group writes that it makes as few rules as possible and backs children’s “I want to try that!”

The same document prints the children’s own comments as written. One third-grader wrote that on the Tarzan rope his body touched the ground the first time, but from the second time he made it all the way, so he thought it was better to keep trying to the end. Another third-grader wrote that while helping with the bonfire she worried, “What if I can’t do it?”, but when she fanned hard the fire caught, and it felt good.

It is rare for a government document to carry writing this direct. I read it sitting up a little straighter.

The group announces on its own page that it has continued to run play parks in the city’s parks, roughly once a month.

Now, I need to go back to the demon. The homework about the bearing is still unfinished.

What the demon was guarding

In the end, the documents never told me clearly what the demon is guarding the north-east of. From the old City Hall he is almost due north; from the station almost due east; from the old village of Shibasaki, north-east. The map in the designer’s head can no longer be checked.

But one thing is certain. A demon-gate demon is there to drive away whatever tries to come in through the gate. Yet what comes to this demon every day is not misfortune but children. The demon does not drive children away. On the contrary, he lets them climb his shoulders and slide down beside his face.

The demon who was meant to guard the demon gate has, over 45 years, become the children’s gatekeeper.

In 1981 the station was being rebuilt, the South Exit rearranged, and the plan for a giant park drawn on the former base to the north. That year, someone put a demon in a corner of the town. Half a century on, the land readjustment is finished, the national park welcomes 3.5 million people a year, and the station has become the JR station outside Tokyo’s 23 wards where more people board than anywhere else. Through all of it, the demon wore the same face in the same place.

Tachikawa is said to be bad at boasting about itself. But there are not many towns where, six minutes’ walk from the station, a demon has been minding the children for 45 years.

Some weekend, try telling a child, “Let’s go and see the demon.” From Shinjuku it is about 30 minutes on the Chuo Line. From Kawasaki, stay on the Nambu Line and it carries you right onto the tracks that run behind the demon’s back.

Quiz answer

The answer is B. According to the city’s timeline, in 1981 the city-planning decisions were made for the main roads related to the former base site and for the area of Showa Kinen Park, among others. The same year, Tachikawa Station began using a temporary station building and construction of the station building started. The first section of the Tama Monorail opened in 1998, and Faret Tachikawa opened in 1994.

Before you go

• Address: 1-5-13 Nishikicho, Tachikawa, Tokyo (Nishiki Daini Park, known as Oni Park).
• Getting there from Tachikawa Station: About 6 minutes’ walk from JR Tachikawa Station (according to Tokyo Location Box and Sanpo no Tatsujin). Leave by the South Exit and walk east along the tracks. The park is on the south-west side of the “Tachikawa Rittai” underpass, where Tachikawa-dori Avenue passes under the JR tracks.
• From central Tokyo and Kanagawa: About 30 minutes from Shinjuku on the JR Chuo Line (according to a Tokyo Metropolitan Government walking-trail leaflet). The JR Nambu Line connects Kawasaki Station and Tachikawa Station, so from the Kawasaki side you can reach Tachikawa without changing trains. Check that day’s timetable.
• Facilities: The demon slide (a wide side and a small-child side you climb partway up by steps), swings, spring riders, a sandpit and an open ground on the south side. Multipurpose toilet and drinking fountain. No vending machine (according to the December 2023 Sanpo no Tatsujin article). No dedicated parking.
• Closures: Play equipment is sometimes out of use for maintenance work. For the latest information, check with the city’s parks section (Parks and Green Spaces Division, Urban Development Department): https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/
• Tachikawa Kanko Navi (Oni Park): https://tokyo-tachikawa.org/spot/1603/
• Safety: The park is close to the railway. When watching trains, keep hold of your child’s hand.
• What to combine it with: The Tachikawa Children’s Future Center, on the old City Hall site, and Tachikawa Manga Park are in the same Nishikicho. A little further on, you can walk to the Nekawa greenway, Tachikawa Park and the banks of the Tama River. Cross to the North Exit and you reach the public art of Faret Tachikawa and, beyond it, Showa Kinen Park.
• Play parks: Check the Tachikawa Adventure Playground Association’s announcements for dates and venues.
• General tips: An IC transit card such as Suica or PASMO makes the trains easy. Check the park’s facilities above before you go; there is no vending machine in the park.

After the playground, at Tachikawa Station North Exit

The demon slide is not equipment for children only. You lift them up, steady them, chase them, wait at the bottom of the steps again and again. At the end of a day in the park with kids, the grown-ups’ backs and shoulders give out first.

A one-minute walk from the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station is On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店), on the third floor of the Etoile Building, 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo. It is a lava-stone hot yoga studio, where you practise on a floor laid with lava-stone plates. Besides room-temperature yoga and Pilates, it offers women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training, and more than 25 kinds of yoga lessons.

It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30, with no difference between weekdays and weekends — open in the morning after you have sent the kids off, and at night after the family is asleep.

First-timers can try a yoga lesson for ¥1,980 including tax, with two bath towels, one face towel and a mat included as rentals. 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/
• Trial lesson booking: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

Down by the tracks at the South Exit, the demon is there again today, mouth open, seeing off trains and children by turns.

Cover photo: The South Exit of Tachikawa Station, with its pedestrian deck and station building (photographed in 2014) (Photo: Nyao148 / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

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