Tachikawa’s sport, watched, run and used: an arena whose first tenant won two national titles, a half marathon that starts on a runway, and Japan’s 400m record.
If you asked people whether Tachikawa is a sports town, most of them would stop to think. There is no professional baseball ground here, and no J.League football stadium. Even people who live in Tachikawa (立川), a city of the Tama area in western Tokyo, might tilt their heads at the question. I did. When I thought of Tachikawa, I thought of the crowds outside the station, never of a place where people cheer.
Then, almost as soon as I started reading the records, I ran into a date. Saturday, 14 October 2017. In a brand-new gymnasium beside Tachihi Station on the Tama Monorail, a men’s professional basketball game was played. It was the first event ever staged in the building. The team that stood on the court that day went on to become champions of Japan that season and the next, two years running.
That gymnasium, it seems, had been put on the market by the company that developed it as a “temporary-type” arena. A temporary building produced two national champions. What’s more, the champions eventually left Tachikawa, and yet the arena’s calendar is still full. Why do things so often start in Tachikawa? I decided to look for the answer by going round a gymnasium, a runway and a river path.
Watching sport in Tachikawa begins at Arena Tachikawa Tachihi: two national titles from a “temporary” hall
If you want to watch sport in Tachikawa, there is only one place to start: Arena Tachikawa Tachihi (アリーナ立川立飛). It is a one-minute walk from Tachihi Station on the Tama Monorail, the elevated monorail that runs north–south through the Tama area. The official guide says there is no parking and no drop-off point for people coming to events or games, and asks visitors to use public transport. So every spectator walks in from the station. As station-side sport goes, it could hardly be cleaner.
According to a notice the Tachihi Group put out on 6 October 2017, the address is 500-4 Izumicho, Tachikawa. It stands on the opposite side of Tachihi Station from the shopping mall LaLaport Tachikawa Tachihi. It is a two-storey steel-frame building on a site of 8,368.13 square metres, with a total floor area of 5,988.56 square metres. It holds 3,275 people. It was built to meet the standards that Japan’s men’s professional basketball league sets for hosting B2-licence games, and it can be used for basketball, volleyball, futsal, badminton and table tennis.
The numbers on the facilities page give a little more of the feel of the place. The court area measures 28.16 by 55.33 metres. The ceiling is up to 14.89 metres high. The floor is wood. You can lay out up to two basketball courts, three volleyball courts or nine badminton courts. Nine badminton courts: picture eighteen pairs of people all hitting shuttlecocks at once, and you feel slightly dizzy just thinking about it.
The opening event was the game I mentioned at the start, on 14 October 2017. According to the Tachihi Group notice, it was the first home game of Round 3 of the 2017–18 season of the men’s professional league, the B.LEAGUE, against the Yokohama B-Corsairs, and the home side running the event was Alvark Tokyo. Open the B.LEAGUE’s official records, and the column for season champions reads: 2017–18, Alvark Tokyo; 2018–19, Alvark Tokyo. The team that played the first whistle in Tachikawa’s new arena became champions of Japan that season and again the next.
Back to that word “temporary”. A Nikkei newspaper article about the arena business carried the headline “A temporary arena that lasts 50 years, at half the construction cost and time.” According to the part of the article that is publicly available, the developer was marketing temporary-type arenas built for less than half the usual cost and construction time, usable for up to about fifty years. Temporary, for fifty years. If it were a person’s temporary lodging, half a century would be far too long. In the world of sports halls, though, it is presumably the smart way to do things: build fast, build cheap, use for a long time. It smells of the practical streak that runs through Tachikawa.
Alvark Tokyo now lives elsewhere. On the club’s official site, its October home games are listed at TOYOTA ARENA TOKYO. The team’s name is Tokyo, and Tachikawa was only ever a temporary home. But the same official site shows a game in the East Asia Super League on 14 October 2026, to be played at Arena Tachikawa Tachihi. Exactly nine years to the day after the opening, the former tenant comes back with an international match. Whether that is coincidence, I can’t say. But with a coincidence like that, you can’t help looking for a meaning.
So once the team carrying Tokyo’s name moved out, what filled the arena? Open the arena’s calendar and the answer is right there. The team names on it contain the word “Tachikawa”.
初日の汗は、予約した人だけが持ち帰れる。
Tachikawa Dice: the die cast by the chamber of commerce became the “last champion” of B3
Tachikawa Dice (立川ダイス) was born in a slightly unusual way. According to the team profile on the club’s official site, it was created in 2016, led by local business groups including the Tachikawa Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the city’s federation of shopping-street associations. A shotengai (商店街) is a Japanese shopping street, usually a row of small independent shops with its own association; Tachikawa has several. The team began as a three-a-side side. In other words, the people of the shopping streets made a basketball team. Usually it works the other way round: a team appears and the shopping streets cheer it on. In Tachikawa, the cheering side moved first.
The name means exactly what it says: dice. The official explanation says dice have long been seen as the tools that govern fate, and that the name comes from the phrase “the die is cast”, expressing a resolve to go for the win against any opponent, however strong, with no retreat. The club’s motto is “Liven up Tama through the power of sport.” Read that knowing the chamber of commerce was one of the godparents, and the willingness to gamble on fate and the wish to give the local economy a lift start to look like two faces of the same die.
The Tachihi Group’s notice describes what came next. A five-a-side team was launched in 2021, and from the 2022–23 season it joined the B3 League. Then, in the 2025–26 season, it won the B3 League championship. Because the leagues were being reorganised, that season turned out to be the last one played under the name B3, so the club calls itself “the last champion of the B3 League”. The last champion: a rather dashing title, but since it is literally true, there’s nothing anyone can say. From 2026 it has been playing in the newly created B.LEAGUE ONE.
For the new season, the team brought in a head coach. According to the same notice, he is Akira Rikukawa, who coached the Tokai University men’s basketball team from 2000 to 2024, won the All Japan Intercollegiate Basketball Championship seven times, and served as head coach of Japan’s Universiade team. A three-a-side team made by shopkeepers had, in ten years, come far enough to hire one of the great names of university basketball.
Home is Arena Tachikawa Tachihi. The Tachihi Group’s sports page describes the arena as the home of both Tachikawa Athletic FC and Tachikawa Dice, and says the group sponsors both teams as top partner. On the arena calendar for 17 October 2026 I found a B.LEAGUE ONE game: Tachikawa Dice against Tokyo Hachioji Bee Trains. A derby between two Tama towns. The fans of both sides can probably go home on the same Chuo Line.
Among the products recognised as Tachikawa specialties by the Tachikawa Tourism Convention Association is a series of keyrings that starts with the team mascot, Tatchii (たっちー). According to the association, they are acrylic keyrings showing Showa Kinen Park, the Tamagawa Aqueduct, local sports teams, stations and so on. They are shaped like puzzle pieces, and if you collect six or more of them you can assemble a die. Before you cast the die, you have to build it. A patient business, this.
Tachikawa sport in numbers
- 3,275 — people: the capacity of Arena Tachikawa Tachihi. You could hold several Tachikawa junior high school assemblies in it at once.
- 14.89 — metres: the arena’s maximum ceiling height. You’ll worry about cricking your neck long before you worry about the ball hitting it.
- 9 — badminton courts that fit in the arena. Eighteen pairs’ worth of shuttlecocks in the air at once.
- 2 — league titles won by the team that played the opening game. As house-warming presents go, a little overdone.
- 40 — metres: the width of the runway that serves as the start line of the Tachikawa City Half Marathon. At the gun, at least, no runner is stuck in a jam.
- 44.44 — seconds: the men’s 400-metre Japanese record, held by an athlete who went to Tachikawa Daiichi Junior High School.
That’s enough numbers about the arena. Tachikawa sport has another story, one that crossed over from the neighbouring city of Fuchu.
Tachikawa Athletic FC: a horseshoe from Fuchu and Tachikawa’s initial
I check the name of the futsal team on the official site of the F.League, Japan’s top futsal league: Tachikawa Athletic Football Club. Hometown: Tachikawa, Tokyo. Team colour: blue. The word “Athletic”, it says, carries the club’s aim of growing, around football and futsal, into a community-rooted sports club that its hometown can be proud of.
The club has a previous name. Its official site explains the club crest as combining a horseshoe, inherited from the long history of Fuchu Athletic FC, with a “T”, the initial of Tachikawa. Fuchu is the town that is home to Tokyo Racecourse. A club born there carried its horseshoe on its chest when it crossed over to Tachikawa. A town without horses is keeping the memory of a horse town.
When and how did it cross over? According to the Tachihi Group’s page, the club has used Arena Tachikawa Tachihi as its home since the 2018–19 season, with the group backing it as top partner, and since fiscal 2019 the group has also sponsored the women’s team, Tachikawa Athletic FC Ladies. On the Japan Football Association’s page for its tournaments, a headline survives from the 27th All Japan Futsal Championship in March 2022: the team then called “Tachikawa-Fuchu”, in its third final, beat Nagoya to take the title for the first time. It was the club’s first national title, from the era when it carried both towns’ names.
Since moving to Tachikawa, the club has been candid on its official site. It has now been four years, it writes, since it started running here in Tachikawa, and in those four years it has not won a title. I find myself wanting to trust a club that tells you about its failures before its victories. In the F.League schedule for the 2026–27 season, home games are played at two venues: Arena Tachikawa Tachihi and Izumi Citizens’ Gymnasium. The fixture list abbreviates them as “Tachikawa Tachihi” and “Tachikawa Izumi”. Two homes, and both in Tachikawa.
Other teams also call Tachikawa home. Tokyo Verdy’s club page introduces its beach soccer team as a section set up in 2017 with Tachikawa as its hometown. It has won the All Japan Beach Soccer Championship five times in a row, and its best result at the Beach Soccer Club World Cup is fourth place. According to the Tachihi Group, its base is TACHIHI BEACH. Tachikawa has no sea, but it has a beach, and on that beach is based a team that is the best in Japan. I wrote about the beach in the article on Tachihi, so I’ll leave it there.
The handball team Zeekstar Tokyo also plays at Arena Tachikawa Tachihi on some days. On its official site I found a notice for the ninth “road support” event of the Tachikawa Professional Sports Liaison Group. On the morning of the public holiday on 23 September 2026, people would gather in front of the Kururin statue at the South Exit of JR Tachikawa Station (Kururin is the city’s mascot), split into groups, and pick up litter along different streets. Gloves, tongs and rubbish bags would be provided by the organisers. Professional teams, on a holiday morning with no game, picking up rubbish outside the station. In a sport with no winners and losers, presumably everybody wins.
Quiz for the wandering traveller
At Tachikawa Park Athletics Stadium, on days when no group has booked it, individuals may practise throwing events, and each throwing event has its own day of the week. Which event can you practise on a Monday? (A) shot put (B) discus (C) javelin. The answer is at the end.
That’s enough about teams. Now it’s your own feet’s turn. Tachikawa has a place to start running that no other town has: a runway.
The runway is the start line: the Hakone Ekiden qualifier and the Tachikawa City Half Marathon
First, briefly, the autumn. According to the official site of the Inter-University Athletic Union of Kanto, on 17 October 2026 the qualifying race for the Tokyo–Hakone Round-Trip College Ekiden Race will be run on a course from the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force’s Camp Tachikawa, through the streets of Tachikawa, to Showa Kinen Park (the national government park on the city’s north side). The Hakone Ekiden is a university relay race run over the New Year holiday, and the students hoping to run it set off together from the runway in Tachikawa. I wrote about this qualifier in the article tracing the history of Tachikawa’s base, so here I want to talk about the spring.
Photo: Rikujojieitai Boueisho / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons
That means the Tachikawa City Half Marathon. The race’s official site describes its distinctive feature like this: it starts on the runway of the Ground Self-Defense Force’s Camp Tachikawa, runs along public roads, and finishes in Showa Kinen Park. The start line is a runway 40 metres wide, so you get to set off from a broad starting line. Ordinary citizen runners can line up on the same runway as the student runners. In Tokyo, there can’t be many races where you start on a runway on your own two feet.
I read the guidelines for the 2027 race. It will be held on Sunday 14 March 2027. The organisers are Tachikawa City, the Tachikawa City Board of Education, the Tokyo Association of Athletics Federations, the Tachikawa City Sports Association, the Tachikawa Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Yomiuri Shimbun Tokyo Head Office. It is run by the Tachikawa City Athletics Association. The supporters include Camp Tachikawa, Showa Kinen Park and the Tachikawa Tourism Convention Association, among others. The side with the runway, the side with the park and the side that does business in town have all put their names to a single race.
The events and their capacities are entertaining in their own right. The half marathon, 21.0975 km, takes 7,000 runners. The 10 km race takes 1,000. The 3 km fun run, 600. The one-mile race, 1,500. And the parent-and-child pairs category, 450 pairs, or 900 people. Add it up and 11,000 people run through Tachikawa that day. One mile, by the way, in a country that otherwise measures everything in metres. Most of the people running it, I suspect, set off without knowing how many metres a mile is and look it up after they finish. I certainly would. (Visitors from Britain and America may feel briefly at home.)
The conditions of entry are detailed too. The half and the 10 km are for people aged 15 and over, excluding junior high school students. The mile is for third-year elementary school pupils and up. The 3 km fun run is for junior high school students and up. The parent-and-child pairs are for children in the first to third years of elementary school with a parent or guardian. The guidelines give separate start times by event: the 10 km at 9:30, the half at 10:00, and the parent-and-child pairs at about 2 pm. Adults pound down the runway in the morning, and in the afternoon children run through the park with their parents. The day’s timetable doubles as a timetable of ages.
The half marathon has cut-off points. Around 5 km, 10:37. Around 7.5 km, 10:55. Around 10.5 km, 11:16. Around 15 km, 11:47. And at 12:40 the half marathon is over. Looking at the cut-off times, even I, who am not running, find myself glancing at my watch.
The race office is at the Tachikawa City Sports Association. In the sponsors’ section, next to Tachihi Holdings and the Tama Shinkin Bank, I also found Kotobukiya, the maker of models and figures, which has its head office in Tachikawa. Tachikawa companies backing the people who run on Tachikawa’s runway.
So why do Tachikawa’s races start on a runway? Half the answer is already visible: because there is a runway. A wide, flat, straight piece of land sits in the middle of town. Anywhere else, just lining up 10,000 people would mean closing several roads. Tachikawa had a place to line them up from the beginning. The other half of the answer lies not with the runners but with the citizens who exercise there every day. On the next page, I walk round the places where Tachikawa’s residents work up a sweat in ordinary life.
初日の汗は、予約した人だけが持ち帰れる。
1
2