Musashi-Urawa Station (RotW)

RotW is my Railways of the Warrior project. Visiting all the Japanese train stations with Fuji in the name & the 12 castles with the original keep still standing wasn’t enough to satisfy my love of lists, so now I’m working through all the stations with Musashi in their name.

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Name in kanji : 武蔵浦和
Kanji meaning: beach + harmony
Station opened : 30th September, 1985
Trainlines: Saikyo, Musashino
# Passengers daily : 46,000
Distance from CityHillsAndSea HQ: 79km
Located in: Saitama

Things to Do

The Lotte confectionery company has a factory about 5 minutes from the station. They used to do tours in the before times. Perhaps the pandemic has passed when you are reading this, so their (Japanese only) website is here.

As Lotte own a baseball team – the Lotte Marines – there’s also a baseball stadium near the factory, where their farm team is based.

After that… well, not a whole lot else apart from shopping. There is a tiny little pond area that’s pretty – Shirahata Marsh.

All About Musashi-Urawa Station

Urawa is a fairly large area in Saitama, with more stations than you could shake a train pass at. There’s – Musashi-Urawa, Minami-Urawa, Kita-Urawa, Higashi-Urawa, Nishi-Urawa … and I think that’s all of them. I assume this cornucopia of commuting choices makes things pretty handy for folk who work in the big smoke to the south.

As you might expect then, Musashi-Urawa doesn’t have a whole heap of things to distinguish itself from any other suburban bedtown but I kind of liked the place: it had a relaxed atmosphere, wide streets and all those multi-level walkways you find around certain Japanese stations that make me feel like I’m in a real life version of 90’s classic video game, Syndicate.

As pointed out above, there’s not much in the way of things to do except perhaps shop, drink coffee, and/or have a snack. One pleasant option if the weather is on your side is to walk ten minutes north west from the station to Shirahata marsh, which is a big pond with a little seating area allowing you to take in the air and view any wildlife that you might be fortunate enough to spot.

On the other hand, if you fancy a walk, you could head west where, after about half an hour, you can find the Saiko Doman Park (actually much closer to Nishi-Urawa station) bordering the Arakawa river. Super observant readers with razor sharp recall may remember that this is the same waterway which winds past both Bushu-Nakagawa & Bushu-Hino. A fun piece of trivia to bear in mind considering that their distance from here might hinder you from otherwise making the connection, although it serves no purpose other than being one of those little geographical peculiarities that certain eejits enjoy.