Tachikawa Parks Guide: Things to Do Beyond Showa Kinen Park, a Walk

Tachikawa is not just Showa Kinen Park. About 260 parks, twice Tokyo’s park space per person, a park in the river and a stadium where Monday is javelin day.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

Ask where the parks are in Tachikawa and most people answer without hesitating: Showa Kinen Park. I have always answered that way myself. With a park that size north of the station, you don’t notice the others. Just as, on a night with a bright moon, you stop seeing the stars.

But when I opened the city’s park map, I flinched a little. Park names were packed in as if to fill every blank space on the map. Oyama Park, Kamisuna Park, Sunagawa Nana-higashi Park No. 4. There is a number four. Nishisuna-ichi Mizutama (“Polka Dot”) Park, Nishisuna-ichi Shizuku (“Droplet”) Park, Nishisuna-ichi Uzumaki (“Swirl”) Park: names like three sisters, all to do with water. I kept counting and easily passed two hundred.

So a question came to mind. Is Tachikawa really a town with lots of parks? Or is one giant park simply wearing the green face for the whole town? Armed with statistics and the city’s documents, I decided to walk the parks of Tachikawa that are not Showa Kinen Park.

How many parks does Tachikawa have? Statistics count “about 260”

First, the numbers. According to Tachikawa City’s statistical yearbook, as of 1 April 2024 the city had 101 urban parks: 79 neighbourhood-block parks, 7 neighbourhood parks, 1 district park, 2 comprehensive parks, 4 plaza parks and 8 green spaces. (“Urban park” is a legal category in Japan, with set sizes and roles.) Separately, there are 157 small parks and playgrounds outside the urban parks law. That makes 258. In the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s annual park survey, the table as of 1 April 2026 lists 101 urban parks managed by the city and 159 other parks: 260. The number creeps up a little year by year. Remember Tachikawa as having about 260 parks.

More surprising than the number was the area. In the same Tokyo table, urban park area per Tachikawa resident is 9.08 square metres. The average for all of Tokyo is 4.30 square metres, and for the 23 central wards 2.93. So Tachikawa residents have about twice as much park as the average Tokyoite, and three times as much as people in the 23 wards. Urban parks also cover 6.97% of the city’s area, nearly double the 3.91% average for the cities of Tama, the western half of Tokyo beyond the 23 wards.

At this point I want to puff out my chest. But look at the table again and you see the trick. Tachikawa’s urban parks add up to about 170 hectares. About 108 hectares of that is “national government park,” in other words the Tachikawa side of Showa Kinen Park. One park carries over 60% of the city’s urban park area. While we’re at it, the same table also lists about 62 hectares of national government park under Akishima City. More than a third of Showa Kinen Park is in Akishima. The park that carries Tachikawa’s name has a surprising family register.

So if you subtract Showa Kinen Park, does Tachikawa go back to being an ordinary town? I did the sums. City-run and Tokyo-run urban parks, excluding the national park, come to about 62 hectares, or about 3.3 square metres per person. That still beats the 23-ward average of 2.93. Hidden in the giant’s shadow, the little parks had been working hard all along.

Then which of these hard workers is the biggest? The answer was not the place I expected.

The city’s largest park is in the river

The statistical yearbook’s table lists 8 sites classified as “green spaces,” totalling about 21.6 hectares. One of them, counted under Shibasakicho, measures about 180,000 square metres on its own. Read the footnote and this one site turns out to be the Tama River Green Space (Tamagawa Ryokuchi), spread over the floodplain of the Tama River. The Shibasakicho part alone makes up more than 30% of the total area of urban parks managed by the city.

In other words, the largest park Tachikawa City manages is in the river. Walk south from the office blocks in front of the station, cross the embankment, and there it is: land that can go under water when the river rises. In the city’s facility guide, the address of the Tama River Green Space Baseball Ground, in one corner of it, is given as “Shibasakicho 5-11 saki.” “Saki” means “beyond”: the land beyond the last street number, where the numbers run out. Even the way the address is written tells you honestly that this is the edge of town.

The ground is for rubber-ball baseball, youth baseball and softball, and only teams based in the city can use it. Upstream, in Nishikicho, is the Tachikawa Park New Embankment Sports Ground, used for youth baseball and football practice; it too is for city teams only. Tachikawa’s children, it seems, spend a good part of their weekends on top of the Tama River. For the view of Mount Fuji from the Tama River Green Space, I refer you to this series’ article on the Nekawa Green Path and the Tama River.

This riverbank has always been Tachikawa’s playground. Only the way people played was completely different. “Tachikawa Monogatari,” the newsletter of the city’s history compilation project, describes the Tama River from the Meiji era to the early Showa era like this. In an age with few amusements, the Tama River was the classic summer outing, busy with bathers and anglers; taking a yakatabune (a roofed pleasure boat), watching cormorant fishing for ayu (sweetfish) and eating the freshly caught fish was the height of a luxurious day off. Near the Hino Bridge, in today’s Nishikicho, there was even a restaurant specialising in ayu. A photo from the early Showa era in the newsletter shows a hut on the riverbank, doubling as a boat waiting room, with crowds of people around it.

The post-war riverbank went through a rougher period too. The Japanese Wikipedia article on the Tama River says that after the war, gravel mining continued for the construction of the US military bases in Tachikawa and Chofu and for the building boom of the high-growth era, leaving mining pits scattered inside and outside the embankments; rainwater collected in them, and children drowned.

Then and now: the Tama River bank

• Then (Meiji to early Showa): pleasure boats, cormorant fishing, freshly caught sweetfish. A hut on the bank where people waited for the boats.
• Then (post-war): a riverbank pitted with old gravel workings, scattered like trenches.
• Now: shouts from youth baseball games and softball bases. Address: “Shibasakicho 5-11 saki,” beyond the last number.

On the bank where people once watched sweetfish, children now chase white baseballs. The way they play has changed, but the Tachikawa habit of going down to the river in summer, it seems, has not.

From the park in the river, I headed to the park beside it. There I found a strange stadium whose character changes with the day of the week.

At Tachikawa Park, Monday is javelin day

Tachikawa Park is a large comprehensive park spanning Shibasakicho and Nishikicho. Its spine is the Nekawa Green Path, about 1.3 kilometres long, with a gymnasium, a baseball ground and an athletics stadium dotted along it. I walked the cherry trees and waterside of the Nekawa Green Path in another article, so I’ll add only one thing here. According to “Tachikawa Monogatari,” as late as the early 1950s there was a boat-hire landing on the Nekawa, with a teahouse by the jetty, and the scene of people rowing under the cherry blossoms even appeared on picture postcards. It is hard to believe for young people walking the green path today, but older people may remember it. Here, though, I want to talk about the athletics stadium beside it.

According to the city, Tachikawa Park Athletics Stadium is opened free to individuals on days when no group has booked it. The interesting part is that what it is opened for changes with the day of the week. From Sunday to Wednesday it is for athletics only. What’s more, individual use for throwing events is set by day. Monday is javelin, Tuesday discus, Wednesday shot put.

At the start of the week the javelins fly, on Tuesday the discuses spin, and on Wednesday iron balls thud down. Plenty of people spend Monday morning dragging themselves through the office meeting, but Monday at Tachikawa Park, at least, goes straight as a javelin. Note that no equipment is lent to individual users. You bring your own javelin. Picturing someone carrying a javelin on the train, I grew slightly uneasy.

From Thursday to Saturday the stadium changes completely. The area inside the cones set out on the infield becomes a “ball play zone,” where you can play football, catch with a soft baseball, or basketball. Bats, golf clubs and similar equipment are not allowed, though. You sign in at the management building, and groups must be fewer than 10 people.

Why is this opening so welcome? Read the city’s FAQ on parks and you see at once. In the city’s parks, ball games are banned everywhere, except for small children playing with soft balls made of vinyl or the like. In 260 parks, there is in principle nowhere a boy can kick a ball. The place he can kick one as hard as he likes is the athletics stadium on Thursday. The athletics stadium in Mikagebashi Park, Sunagawacho, is also opened free as a stadium where you can play ball games, at times when no group has booked it.

One more small coincidence on the map. According to the city’s documents, the lowest point in Tachikawa is around Nishikicho 6-chome. The address of Tachikawa Park Athletics Stadium is also Nishikicho 6-chome. On the lowest ground in the city, every Monday, people launch javelins at the sky.

North of the stadium, on the north side of the Shibasaki Gymnasium, is Ganigara Hiroba (Ganigara Plaza), opened in April 2017. The city writes that the name comes from the area once being called “ganigara” because there used to be lots of crabs (kani) here. And the city’s Environment Book 2025 contains one more line not to be missed. In 2021 a citizens’ group released Genji firefly larvae into the channel behind the Ganigara rice paddy, and fireflies have since established themselves there. The crabs left; something that glows arrived.

Leaving the park of javelins and balls, I headed north. Next came a park that was once a shrine forest, and a lawn priced by the square metre.

A shrine forest, and lawn at 6 yen a square metre: Suwa no Mori Park and Suwa no Mori Plaza

Across one road to the north of Suwa Shrine in Shibasakicho is Suwa no Mori Park. According to the city, it was originally part of the “chinju no mori,” the sacred forest that surrounds a Japanese shrine, and after the war it was laid out and transformed into a public park. The shrine is said to have about 1,200 years of history, and its forest was once so thick that it was dark even at midday. Tall trees still stand in the park, and the city writes that many wild birds come in search of the greenery. In the “Twelve Green Views of Tachikawa,” chosen by the Tachikawa City Greening Promotion Council in February 2003, Suwa Shrine and the Suwa forest are number seven.

Next to the park on the east side is Suwa no Mori Hiroba (Suwa no Mori Plaza), built on the site of the former Shibasaki community learning centre. It opened in full, lawn included, on 14 July 2017. Its area is 3,971.71 square metres, of which the lawn is about 1,817 square metres. The list of facilities includes one wheelchair-accessible drinking fountain, seven benches, and one “back-stretching bench.” Seven ordinary benches and one for stretching your back. People who sit and people who arch: the plaza has planned for both.

What I liked most was the way the plaza’s usage fee is written. If you take over the plaza for an event or the like, the fee is 6 yen per square metre per day. If it comes to less than 100 yen, it is rounded up to 100. So, by this calculation, if you take over one picnic sheet’s worth of lawn, 100 yen covers it. For events charging admission of 2,001 yen or more the fee doubles, and for commercial filming it goes up by half. Meanwhile, groups such as those in which more than half the members are 18 or under and live, work or study in the city are exempt. In the way the lawn is priced, you can see what the town wants to look after.

Tachikawa’s parks in numbers

• 9.08: square metres of urban park per Tachikawa resident. About twice the Tokyo average, though over 60% of it comes courtesy of Showa Kinen Park.
• 30%+: the share of the city’s urban park area made up by the Tama River Green Space (Shibasakicho part). The city’s biggest park is in the river.
• 69: pieces of outdoor fitness equipment in 28 city parks. Adults are allowed to hang off them too.
• 448: trees designated by the city as protected trees (as of April 2023). Each gets a subsidy of 4,500 yen a year.
• 6: yen to rent one square metre of the Suwa no Mori Plaza lawn for a day.
• 560: square metres, the size of the Tachikawa Chuo Park Skate Park. It is run by the users’ own management committee.

A shrine forest became a park, a learning centre’s site became a lawn. Many of Tachikawa’s parks are on the site of something else. And the biggest examples of that are next, in Sakaecho and Izumicho.