Tachikawa Filming Locations Guide: Anime Pilgrimage and TV Dramas

Even if you have never been to Tachikawa, you have probably seen it on screen. 161 listed shoots, an anime “Academy City”, and why characters come here to rest.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

Even if you have never been to Tachikawa (立川), you have probably seen it.

The October 2021 issue of Finance, the Japanese Ministry of Finance’s public-relations magazine, notes in an article introducing Tachikawa that on Tokyo-area TV news, when snow is observed, footage of Tachikawa is sometimes shown. When it snows, the cameras go to Tachikawa. Tachikawa is a regular on the snow news.

Not only on snowy days. The wide pavement where the hero of a Sunday-night drama is running, the hospital corridor where a detective in a late-night drama asks questions, the station plaza where a superhero fights a monster — without your noticing, they may all be Tachikawa. The Tachikawa Tourism and Convention Association calls its town “a town where stories are born”.

Why does it get filmed so much? And why do the people in these stories keep coming to Tachikawa — to rest, to hide away, or to start again? Tracing Tachikawa on screen, I went looking for the reason.

Counting Tachikawa’s filming locations: 161 entries in the tourism association’s list

My clue is the “Tachikawa Filming Location Special” on the association’s website. Films, dramas, TV shows, commercials and music videos shot in the city each have their own page. In the feature, the association introduces Tachikawa as a town that has been the setting for many films, dramas, music videos and anime, where you can also enjoy seichi junrei — “pilgrimage to sacred sites”, the Japanese fans’ term for visiting places that appear in anime, manga and drama.

On 10 October 2026 I counted the list to its final page. It held 161 works. The oldest was from 2013, the newest a 2026 drama. By year: 2 in 2013, 3 in 2015, between none and two a year from 2016 to 2020. Then it jumps: 26 in 2021, 28 in 2022, 34 in 2023. 17 in 2024, 32 in 2025, and 12 in 2026 up to October. Of course, this is the number the association listed, not the total number of shoots. Even so, it is enough to tell you that nearly every month some channel is filming something in Tachikawa.

Count by location and you see the town’s acting credits. Leaving aside district names, the most frequent is Sun Sun Road, with 34. Next come Faret Tachikawa Art with 16, GREEN SPRINGS with 14, and Tachikawa Keirin velodrome with 11. Tachikawa Hospital, Tachikawa City Hall and the Tachikawa Chamber of Commerce and Industry have 8 each, Suwa-no-Mori Park also 8, and Tachikawa Chuo Hospital 7. Among districts, Akebonocho leads by far with 63, followed by Nishikicho with 32, Midoricho with 30 and Shibasakicho with 25. North of the station, south of the station, and Midoricho, built on the former site of the US air base that occupied central Tachikawa for decades after the war. Almost all of central Tachikawa has stood in front of the camera.

The range of the 161 is astonishing. There are NHK’s morning serial dramas and TBS’s Sunday-night Nichiyo Gekijo dramas; late-night dramas; tokusatsu superhero shows; police dramas; medical dramas. Films, commercials, music videos, variety shows. At this point, finding a film crew that has never been to Tachikawa looks harder than finding a work set in Tachikawa.

Let me also recall a slightly older Tachikawa. According to “Kono Machi Archives”, a local-history series by Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Realty, 1960s Tachikawa had ten cinemas — Cinema Tachikawa, Tachikawa Central, Tachikawa Shochiku and Tachikawa Chuo at the North Exit, and Tachikawa Meigaza, Tachikawa Nikkatsu, Tachikawa Daiei, Toei Tachikawa Minamiza, Tachikawa Toho and Tachikawa Shin-Toho at the South Exit — and was called “the movie town”. Cinema Tachikawa at the North Exit opened in 1925 as “Tachikawa Kinema”, Tachikawa’s first cinema, and closed in 1976. An information board stands on the site, and the name “Cinema-dori Shopping Street” still survives around it. Just reading the names, some people will remember the colours of the signs.

Then, Tachikawa was a town for watching films. Now, Tachikawa is also a town where films and dramas are shot. According to the same archive, the city now has four cinemas with 23 screens, and Tachikawa can be said to have revived as “the movie town”. It stayed a town for watching and became a town for filming too. The history of the cinemas is covered in another article in this series.

So which spot in Tachikawa is the most in demand? The answer was just outside the North Exit.

Sun Sun Road and Faret Tachikawa: the busiest few hundred metres in front of the station

Thirty-four. Sun Sun Road is the place that appears most often in the association’s list.

The road runs straight north from the North Exit of Tachikawa Station, beneath the track of the Tama Monorail. The monorail runs overhead; buildings and rows of trees line both sides. For a drama crew, it must be a place where urban feel, openness and a slightly futuristic landscape come all at once. When GREEN SPRINGS appeared in the tokusatsu show Avataro Sentai Donbrothers, the association noted that the monorail scenery is put to good use even in shows like this. A train running through the sky makes a fine backdrop for heroes.

Sun Sun Road’s 34 include the drama Nagi’s Long Vacation (凪のお暇), the film G-Men, TV Tokyo’s Ultraman Trigger, and TBS Sunday-night dramas Get Ready! and the final episode of GIFT. In the 2015 film Rain Tree no Kuni (“The Land of the Rain Tree”), the scene of the two leads walking in the rain was shot on Sun Sun Road.

Speaking of rain, there is another. Episode 1 of Fuji TV’s autumn 2023 drama Ichiban Suki na Hana (“My Favourite Flower”) featured the area around Faret Tachikawa. In its record of the shoot, the association wrote: “the crystallised effort of the staff who created the rain”. The square in front of Tachikawa Station, it seems, gets rained on a lot — by artificial rain. If you waited for real rain, you could never schedule a shoot.

Faret Tachikawa’s 16 are probably chosen for the same reason. This district, home to 109 public artworks, adds depth to a frame all by itself. The artworks themselves belong to another article, but dramas such as Yugure ni, Te o Tsunagu (“Hold Hands at Dusk”) and Get Ready!, an MBS drama, and even a series adapting Fujiko F. Fujio’s science-fiction short stories (Fujiko F. Fujio created Doraemon) have passed through these art-filled street corners.

For episode 7 of TV Asahi’s drama Chotto Dake Esper (“Just a Little Esper”), scenes in which the hero goes from place to place following predictions of where espers will appear were shot at three locations in the city. The association records that the shoot met the director’s request for egawari — a “change of picture”, where the scenery shifts completely from scene to scene. You can do that within a few minutes’ walk of the station. Sun Sun Road’s 34 credits are a medal for that convenience.

But the real fun of Tachikawa’s locations is not on the station’s main avenue. It lies in rather unexpected places.

Tachikawa Keirin velodrome: a stage that can play any part

Few people would believe at once that the Tachikawa Keirin velodrome — a track for keirin, Japan’s betting-based bicycle racing — has played role after role in TV dramas.

The velodrome appears 11 times in the association’s list. In TBS’s 2021 drama Ore no Ie no Hanashi (“The Story of My Family”), its underground passage was used. In NHK’s 2023 late-evening drama Yuming Stories, the velodrome appears in the shoot for the food court of the supermarket where the heroine works. In episode 6 of TBS’s 2024 Friday drama Warau Matryoshka (“The Laughing Matryoshka”), filming took place around the velodrome’s food stalls, and local citizens took part as extras in a scene with an election campaign truck. The association writes that the characters’ fiery speeches, plus the heat outside, made for a red-hot set.

There are also the dramas Megami no Kyoshitsu (“The Goddess’s Classroom”), Kurosagi, Roppongi Class, Invisible and ONE DAY, and the tokusatsu show Avataro Sentai Donbrothers. According to the association, in episode 31 of Donbrothers the heroes all assembled at the velodrome.

The velodrome has an underground passage, food stalls and wide spectator stands. The passage becomes a secret tunnel; the stalls become a food court or an election rally; the stands become a crowd scene. One facility, playing that many parts. In terms of range, Tachikawa Keirin is quite the versatile actor.

The funniest is the 2023 film Tonde Saitama: Biwako yori Ai o Komete (“Fly Me to the Saitama: From Biwa Lake with Love”). According to the association, Tachikawa was used in filming — the velodrome and Nishikicho are in the list — and extras registered with the association took part. A film about the uproar over Saitama, the prefecture just north of Tokyo, shot in Tachikawa, Tokyo. I wonder how the people of Tachikawa felt standing in as extras. At the very least, they showed generosity in taking the job.

If the velodrome is a versatile lead, hospitals and town halls are the great supporting actors whose names never appear.

Hospitals, city hall, chamber of commerce: fine performances by ordinary buildings

In the world of TV drama, there never seem to be enough hospitals, government offices and company meeting rooms.

In the association’s list, Tachikawa Hospital appears 8 times, Tachikawa Chuo Hospital 7, Tachikawa City Hall 8 and the Tachikawa Chamber of Commerce and Industry 8. Tachikawa Hospital appears in dramas such as Kimi ga Kokoro o Kureta kara (“Because You Gave Me Your Heart”), 18/40 and D&D; Tachikawa Chuo Hospital shows up in Aibou, Shiawase na Kekkon (“A Happy Marriage”) and Ameku Takao no Suiri Karte. Tachikawa City Hall has played things other than a city hall in episode 1 of Reibai Tantei Jozuka Hisui (“Medium Detective Hisui Jozuka”), Dr. Chocolate, Keishicho Sosa Ikkacho and others.

In Fuji TV’s autumn 2022 drama silent, two places in Tachikawa were used as a sign-language school. A vocational school in the city stood in for the school’s building, classroom and office, and a hall at the South Exit for another classroom. On screen, it is not Tachikawa, just “a sign-language school”.

In episode 34 of TV Asahi’s 2025 Kamen Rider Gavv, the Local Autonomy College in Midoricho became the setting. The association writes that while the trainees of the Local Autonomy College ran for their lives, the Kamen Riders saved them. At a national college for training local government officials, the trainees flee from a monster. As crisis-management training for public administration, that is quite hands-on.

What you notice here is that Tachikawa is usually filmed not as Tachikawa, but as “somewhere”. The hospital becomes a nameless hospital, City Hall a nameless office, the velodrome a food court. On screen, Tachikawa generally does not give its name.

Yet in some works, Tachikawa clearly introduces itself as Tachikawa. And the characters who come there have something in common.

Tachikawa in the stories: why do the heroes come here to rest?

Let us start with a drama from the summer of 2019.

According to the association, Nagi’s Long Vacation is a manga by Misato Konari serialised in Akita Shoten’s Elegance Eve, made into a TV drama in July 2019. The heroine moves into an apartment in Tachikawa, and real places in the city — Tachikawa Station, Sun Sun Road, Showa Kinen Park (Showa Memorial Park) and others — are drawn in the story. The drama kept that setting and shot at many locations around the city. The association’s list also names the Central Library, GREEN SPRINGS, the Tamagawa Ryokuchi baseball ground and Oni Park.

The oitoma in the Japanese title means a break, a leave of absence. Worn out by a tightly wound life, the heroine lets go of everything and moves somewhere to rest. That somewhere is Tachikawa.

That brings to mind another work. In Hikaru Nakamura’s manga Saint Young Men (聖☆おにいさん), Buddha and Jesus come down to earth on vacation and share an apartment in Tachikawa, Tokyo. The manga and Oni Park are covered in another article in this series, so I will say just one thing here. The town where the founders of two of the world’s great religions spend their holiday and the town where a worn-out heroine takes her break are the same Tachikawa. People who want a rest, it seems, come to Tachikawa.

Not only to rest. People also come to Tachikawa to rebuild.

The 2016 film Shin Godzilla is covered in detail in the article on the Tachikawa Regional Disaster Prevention Base, so I will be brief. According to the association’s record, filming took place at the base from 10 to 12 October 2015, with many extras taking part. The Ministry of Finance’s Finance names, among Tachikawa’s pilgrimage sites, the Cabinet Office’s backup facility for a disaster headquarters that appears in the film. The premise — that when the capital’s functions are lost, the government heads to Tachikawa to regroup — is not fiction. According to Cabinet Office documents, if the Prime Minister’s Office, the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defense’s Central Command Post become unusable, the national disaster headquarters is to be set up at this backup facility in Tachikawa.

In 2024 the anime of the manga Kaiju No. 8 teamed up with the city of Tachikawa. According to the official special site, because one of the bases of the “Japan Defense Force” that the hero hopes to join is in Tachikawa, an event called “Kaiju No. 8 × Tachikawa: A Defense Force Member’s Day Off” was held around the city from 26 April to 30 June. A life-size Kaiju No. 8 toured the station’s free passage and a department store, and banners with newly drawn illustrations lined Sun Sun Road. Look at the event’s name again. A Defense Force member’s day off. The troops who fight monsters, too, are supposed to spend their days off in Tachikawa.

According to the association, the TV anime Kaiju Sekai Seifuku is also set in Tachikawa, Tokyo. Tachikawa, it seems, has a special relationship with monsters.

Exhausted people come to rest, gods come on vacation, the government comes to regroup, and defence troops spend their days off. The creators of these stories choose Tachikawa as a place to put something down for a while and begin again. Why that should be, I want to consider once more at the end.

Tachikawa on screen in numbers

• 161 — works in the tourism association’s filming location feature, counted on 10 October 2026, listed from 2013 on.
• 34 — of those, works in which Sun Sun Road appears. Tachikawa’s most in-demand performer.
• 11 — works in which Tachikawa Keirin velodrome appears. The underground passage and the food stalls each play their own roles.
• 400 — extras registered with Tachikawa Location Service as of February 2026. You could be number 401.
• 8 — consecutive years that Tachikawa has been chosen among the “88 Anime Pilgrimage Sites You Want to Visit” for A Certain Scientific Railgun.
• 21 — vending machines in Tachikawa wrapped in artwork from the A Certain series.

The wanderer’s quiz

In what year did the Tachikawa Tourism Association, predecessor of today’s Tachikawa Tourism and Convention Association, hold its first collaboration event with A Certain Magical Index? (A) 2005 (B) 2010 (C) 2018. The answer is revealed at the end.

Before that, I must tell you about the work that has kept company with Tachikawa longest. Its setting is a fictional city.