Machida · 町田市

On the map, Machida juts out from Tokyo into Kanagawa Prefecture like a peninsula, which is why locals like to joke that their city really belongs to Kanagawa. A trip to Machida offers a lively shopping district around the station, green hills, and a few surprising museums, all just over half an hour from Shinjuku.

A Trading Post on the Silk Road

As far back as the Edo period, Machida was a market town where merchants traded raw silk from the mountains of western Japan before it went out into the world via the port of Yokohama. Today, the route is known as the "Japanese Silk Road." With the Odakyū Line and the Yokohama Line, Machida became a rail hub and a bedroom community for Tokyo commuters in the 20th century. The center of town is called Haramachida; this is where you'll find department stores, electronics shops, game arcades, and the narrow lanes of the Nakamise shopping street.

Sights in Machida

Serigaya Park is home to the Museum of Modern Japanese Prints, one of the few museums in Japan devoted entirely to woodblock prints, etchings, and screen printing, from ukiyo-e to the present day. The park itself, with its streams and playgrounds, is a pleasant place to linger. To the north lies Yakushi-ike Park, built around an old irrigation pond and famous for its lotus blossoms in summer, cherry blossoms in spring, and a historic farmhouse. Right next door, a large troop of squirrels lives freely in a small wood at Machida Risu-en. A destination for culture lovers is Buaisō in the Tsurukawa district, the thatched-roof country house of the diplomat Shirasu Jirō and the essayist Shirasu Masako, who lived here during and after the war.

Eating and Going Out in Machida

Around the station, ramen shops, izakaya, yakiniku grills, and cafés crowd together. The small restaurants in the lanes of Haramachida are popular with students from the area's many colleges, and the nightlife, with its karaoke bars and pubs, is correspondingly lively. In the countryside around the city, vegetables are grown and sold at farm stands and markets.

The Green Hinterland

If you only know Machida as a commuter town, you underestimate its surroundings. To the north, residential neighborhoods give way to the wooded Tama Hills, preserved as a satoyama landscape of rice terraces, bamboo groves, and farmhouses. In the area around Oyamada and Tsurukawa, hiking trails lead through oak forests where fireflies glow in early summer. The Sakai River, which marks the border with Kanagawa, is lined by a cycling path. That makes it easy to split a day in Machida: museum or park in the morning, a walk through the hills in the afternoon, and the lanes of Haramachida in the evening.

Soccer, Getting There, and the Best Time to Visit

Since 2024, the city has had a club in the top division, FC Machida Zelvia, whose stadium sits on a hill in Nozuta Park. The Odakyū Line connects Machida with Shinjuku as well as with Enoshima and Hakone, and the JR Yokohama Line connects it with Shin-Yokohama and the Shinkansen. Direct buses run to Haneda Airport. Machida is at its most beautiful in spring and fall; in July and August, the lotus blooms in Yakushi-ike Park. In November, the maple trees in Serigaya Park are especially gorgeous.