Tachikawa Stroll

I had a moment to take a stroll in Tachikawa.

Tachikawa is bland as hell in my mind. It was nice to reconfirm that it has some good plain neighborhoods of an older age. The city’s got a ton of land that used to be a military base and has gradually been developed in large chunks to become malls or IKEA, or transformed into the mammoth Showa Kinen Park. These areas have large streets and spaces that are not interesting to me.

The stroll was in the Takamatsu-cho area. A lot of people around here maintain lovely spaces in their small lots.

Snowflakes fell while I strolled, in the most sporadic way possible. The neighborhoods are older, but not so old that they predate the war—the streets are far too straight. That’s my guess, anyway.

Very nice bicycle / motorcycle shop. I sense multiple generations influencing the external appearance.

It is a drastic change each time you emerge back into the main drag from one of the narrow streets. You can then cross and plunge into another neighborhood just as quickly. The traffic signage has been wisely composed and configured to deter almost anyone from driving onto the side streets. Well done, Tachikawa.

The thought percolating in my head throughout the stroll was how I am drawn to older buildings—and the buildings whose age I savor are getting younger—but I am fine with those buildings going away. I have reached a point where I do not begrudge the property owner who makes the decision to let an older building go away to allow a better land use. Instead I sometimes begrudge the begrudger who in lamenting the loss of buildings they find interesting veers into implying that the property owner is in the wrong. It is unlikely that this complainant would spend the money to maintain one, or choose to live in a poorly insulated or seismically unsound building just for its appearance. Sure, they might, and they are welcome to do so at very low initial cost in many parts of Japan.

Do not worry, this thought about buildings was not as troubled as I make it sound. Maybe the thought was really just “everything changes, whadyagonnado.”