イタリア産天然溶岩石を使った溶岩ホットヨガスタジオ「オンザショア」

イタリア産天然溶岩石を使った溶岩ホットヨガスタジオ「オンザショア」

Tachikawa Tachihi History Walk: Aircraft, a Beach and Things to Do

A beach, a mall and an arena on factory ground

It began in November 2012. According to the history, the group finished its reorganisation that month and began studying how to develop its land as a whole. The first project announced was a plan to bring a large shopping complex to the south-east side of Tachihi Station.

Arena Tachikawa Tachihi near Tachihi Station, its name lettered across a white exterior wall.
Arena Tachikawa Tachihi near Tachihi Station, its name lettered across a white exterior wall.
Photo: Bject / CC BY 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons
LaLaport Tachikawa Tachihi on former factory ground, with a lawn and play area in front.
LaLaport Tachikawa Tachihi on former factory ground, with a lawn and play area in front.
Photo: MaedaAkihiko / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

To turn the land into a building site, in September 2013 the company closed a golf driving range it had run for more than thirty years. That was six months after the Enoshima factory’s business ended. On land where a company had built aircraft, from some point after the war, little white balls were being launched into the sky instead. This land, it seems, is not at ease unless it is sending something up into the air.

The plan opened on 10 December 2015 as LaLaport Tachikawa Tachihi. Its effect even showed up in the accounts of the line in the sky that runs past it. The Tama Toshi Monorail’s management reform plan says that because a large shopping complex directly connected to a station opened in December 2015, operating revenue for that fiscal year rose 6.8 per cent on the previous year. A mall on an aircraft company’s land pushed up the monorail’s income. According to the group’s introduction, it is a large shopping mall next to Tachihi Station with 240 shops and a cinema. Its address is 935-1 Izumicho, Tachikawa.

In October 2017, Arena Tachikawa Tachihi began operating. It is a multipurpose event hall holding up to 3,000 people, one minute’s walk from Tachihi Station. Besides basketball and futsal tournaments, it hosts classes in fencing, gymnastics and more, and the arena’s calendar is lined with professional basketball games. In August 2018, Dome Tachikawa Tachihi was completed next door. The arena sometimes hosts a stranger contest, too. The activity log of the Tama Monorail’s PR mascot, on the monorail’s official site, lists the “Tachikawa Strongest Mascot Championship,” held at Arena Tachikawa Tachihi, up to its fourth edition in October 2025. Tachikawa has a tournament to decide which mascot is the strongest. (Japan’s local mascots, costumed characters representing towns and companies, are a serious business.) And it holds that tournament on land belonging to a company that once built fighter planes.

And then there is the beach. TACHIHI BEACH. Its official site calls it Japan’s largest beach barbecue venue, one minute’s walk from Tachihi Station. The address is 935 Izumicho, Tachikawa: almost the same number as LaLaport. The beach and the shopping mall live next door to each other. I find myself worrying, needlessly, whether the postman ever mixes up swimsuits and shopping bags. The group’s development page describes it as a place where you can enjoy a resort mood in Tachikawa, which should have no sea, and says it hosts tournaments of beach volleyball and beach soccer. A beach in a city with no coastline calls itself the largest in Japan. Where the beaches it beat were when they heard the news, I do not know.

Around the beach stand other things that do not look like factory land. According to the history, in December 2021 the Tachihi Beer Brewery, Tachihi Brewery, opened. At the World Beer Awards 2022 it won silver and bronze; at the International Beer Cup in the same year its Belgian white won gold; at the World Beer Awards 2023 its pilsner won gold. Beer brewed by an aircraft company’s group is winning gold at international competitions. In November 2024, MAO RINK TACHIKAWA TACHIHI, a skating rink supervised by the figure skater Mao Asada, opened. According to the group’s introduction, on a 9,000-square-metre site it has an international-standard 30 m × 60 m main rink with a permanent stand of 1,000 seats, and a 24 m × 40 m sub-rink. In one corner of land owned by a company that built aircraft, people now leap on ice.

On a summer afternoon the sand holds the heat, and if you stand barefoot the soles of your feet sizzle. Towards evening only the surface cools, and when you dig in with your fingers the warmth of the day is still underneath. A feeling you could meet on any beach is here, under an inland sky, beside the monorail viaduct.

On a weekend evening, after a game, spectators pour out of the arena and walk towards the station. When I picture those footsteps, I think again of the number 42,332. The crowd that used to head for this land every morning, and the crowd that comes here now to play. The same land has changed its role, from a place to work to a place to gather.

Let me take a short detour here.

Wayfarer’s detour quiz

Tappi-kun and Tappi-chan are the official characters who work in the Tachihi group’s PR department. According to their character website, what are their favourite foods?

  • A. Yakisoba (fried noodles) and ramune (a marble-stoppered soda)
  • B. Oranges and “shuwa-shuwa” (fizzy stuff: Tachihi beer)
  • C. Monjayaki from Tsukishima

The answer comes together with the answer to our mystery.

初日の汗は、予約した人だけが持ち帰れる。

体験レッスンを予約体験専用 03-6665-0898LINE

Where the character for “fly” went

Back to the original question. Why does a company that no longer flies refuse to let go of the character for “fly”?

Read the history to the end and you find that this company holds on to the memory of aircraft far more tightly than you would expect. In April 2014 it restored two aircraft, the R-53 and R-HM light planes, and put them on public display. According to the car magazine article, they were shown in Tachikawa for four days, from 17 to 20 April. Small aircraft the company itself had built after the war, repaired some sixty years later and shown to the public. This was the year after the Enoshima factory closed. One of the first things a company did after it stopped making things was to repair things it had made long ago.

In April 2018 it opened a company-led nursery school. Its name is Fuji Aka-tombo Hoikuen, the “Fuji Red Dragonfly Nursery.” The nickname of the trainer it once built 2,398 times now hangs on the sign of a place that looks after small children. The name of a plane for learning to fly passes to children growing up on the ground. That said, the first skill these children master is probably not flying but putting on their own shoes.

The decisive moment was the company’s centenary, on 1 November 2024. The commemorative website lists the celebrations: a tenor recital by José Carreras on 3 November 2024, a special performance of Tachikawa Tachihi Kabuki from 21 to 24 November, and a special concert of the “Ode to Joy” on 8 December. Another special kabuki performance followed in October 2025. The voice of a world-famous tenor and the frozen poses of kabuki actors celebrated the hundredth birthday of an aircraft factory town. The history even records that in October 2024 a documentary set at the group’s auberge, a film about innovative chefs over 540 days, had its world premiere at the 40th Warsaw International Film Festival. In the top message on the centenary website, the company calls itself “a company whose predecessor was Tachikawa Aircraft.” The commemorative logo, it explains, forms “100th” from the saw-tooth roofs of its warehouse buildings, and beside the company name sits a corporate mark designed around the character 飛 from Tachihi. Words are added about the history of heavy industry living together with the future of town-making. The company is not keeping the character for “fly” out of inertia. It has gone to the trouble of turning it into a design and raising it high.

The answer to the mystery is probably here. The company’s website says, “our history began with building aircraft,” and goes on to say that it now treats its vast land holdings as social capital and creates new value for the region through education, culture, the arts and sport. What it makes has changed from aircraft to a town, but it has not let go of its picture of itself as a company that makes things. The character 飛 is, I think, the shortest possible signature on that self-portrait.

And that signature now even has a face. One that jumps a lot, too. Tappi-kun and Tappi-chan work in the group’s PR department. According to their character site, their job is to tell as many people as possible about what Tachihi does, and they study Tachihi every day for that purpose. They apparently have a habit of jumping when they are having fun or are happy. The PR staff of a company that no longer flies jump when they are pleased. I consider this the most honest self-introduction the company has.

There is one more bonus coincidence. The bridge where the Tama Monorail crosses the Tama River is written 立日橋, and according to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s publicity it is read “Tappi-bashi.” Follow the same monorail line south from the town of Tachihi and you find, over the Tama River, a “Tappi” bridge, though its second character is “sun,” not “fly.” So: the company’s name is read Tachihi, its mascots are called Tappi, and a bridge with a different character is also Tappi. Tachikawa, it seems, floats slightly in mid-air even in its spelling.

The quiz answer is B, oranges and “shuwa-shuwa” (Tachihi beer). The character site even says that on Fridays they apparently enjoy some fizzy stuff as a reward for working hard all week. The PR staff of a company that built aircraft a hundred years ago now end their week on Friday night with a beer that has won gold at an international competition. That is how times change.

To anyone who says Tachikawa has nothing, I would like to lay out the facts I have gathered in this article. There was a factory here that built close to 10,000 trainers and fighters that flew in Japan’s skies. Engineers who came out of it joined some of the headwaters of Japan’s post-war passenger cars. A plane that circled the same sky for two and a half days was born here. A light aircraft said to be the first domestically built plane of the post-war era was assembled here. And today, on that company’s land, there is a beach in a town without a sea, a beer that has won gold at international competitions, and a tournament to decide the strongest mascot. Not, I think, a town with nothing.

Take the Chuo Line from Shinjuku to Tachikawa, then the monorail for four minutes. That is all the distance between you and a century of an aircraft town. Drink a beer brewed by the descendants of an aircraft factory on a beach in a town without a sea. West Tokyo offers that way to spend a weekend.

Before you go

  • Getting to Tachikawa: from Shinjuku, take the JR Chuo Line to Tachikawa Station with no change. From Kanagawa, the JR Nambu Line links Kawasaki Station and Tachikawa Station (35.5 km end to end) with no change. From the Yokohama area, you can also take the JR Yokohama Line to Hachioji and change to the Chuo Line. Check timetables and journey times on the JR East website.
  • To the Tachihi area: from Tachikawa-Kita Station on the Tama Monorail, just north of JR Tachikawa Station, ride north. It is 3 minutes to Takamatsu Station and 4 minutes to Tachihi Station (Tama Monorail fare and journey-time table). Out of the ticket gate at Tachihi, LaLaport Tachikawa Tachihi is right beside the station; TACHIHI BEACH and Arena Tachikawa Tachihi are each a minute’s walk.
  • To combine: the view from the Tama Monorail window (heading north, the windows on your left face west), GREEN SPRINGS north of Tachikawa Station, and Showa Kinen Park, about 8 minutes’ walk from Tachikawa-Kita Station. With half a day you can walk the aircraft company’s land and the park on the old airfield one after the other.
  • TACHIHI BEACH: 935 Izumicho, Tachikawa, a minute’s walk from Tachihi Station. There is no car park, so come by public transport. Check prices, reservations and opening hours on the official site: https://www.tachihi-beach.com/
  • LaLaport Tachikawa Tachihi: 935-1 Izumicho, Tachikawa. Check opening hours on the official site: https://mitsui-shopping-park.com/lalaport/tachikawa/
  • Arena Tachikawa Tachihi: a minute’s walk from Tachihi Station. Check the event calendar on the official site: https://www.arenatachikawatachihi.com/
  • Tachihi group history: https://www.tachihi.co.jp/about/timeline/ / Tappi-kun and Tappi-chan: https://character.tachihi.co.jp/
  • Tama Monorail fares and timetables: https://www.tama-monorail.co.jp/
  • Practical tips: an IC card such as Suica or PASMO works on both JR and the monorail. Events and opening days change, so check the official sites before you go.

Back to the North Exit of Tachikawa Station

Ride back from Tachihi to Tachikawa-Kita Station and walk down to the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station. One minute from there is On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店), a lava-stone hot yoga studio, on the 3rd floor of the Etoile Building, 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo. It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30, so whether you spent the day under the sun on the sand or the evening shouting at the arena, it is still open on your way home.

You practise hot yoga in a studio warmed by lava stone. There are also room-temperature yoga, Pilates, women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training, with more than 25 kinds of yoga lessons alone.

For first-timers there is a trial yoga lesson for ¥1,980 including tax. Two bath towels, one face towel and mat rental are included, so you can come with nothing. 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.

Stretch out legs grown heavy from a day’s walking on a warm floor. At the end of a walk through an aircraft town, counting your breaths is not a bad way to land.

  • On the Shore: https://ontheshore.jp/
  • Book a trial lesson: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

Over Tachihi you no longer hear the sound of aircraft being built. But somewhere today, the two members of the PR department are jumping.

Cover photo: Tachihi Station on the Tama Monorail under blue sky, its building cradled by the elevated track. (Photo: MaedaAkihiko / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

More Tachikawa Walks

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