Musashi-Nakahara 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.

Click this link for more info.

Name in kanji : 武蔵中原
Kanji meaning: middle plains
Station opened : March 9th 1927
Trainlines: JR Nambu
# Passengers daily : 35,000
Distance from CityHillsAndSea HQ: 46 km
Located in: Nakahara ward, Kawasaki, Kanagawa

Things to Do

Near the station? Not a whole lot. But if you walk towards the river (I’m starting to sense a theme developing here) you can find Todoroki park, a very pleasant place to wander about.

Amongst other sporting facilities there you can find Todoroki Stadium, the home ground of Kawasaki Frontale.

It’s also home to the Kawasaki City Museum (to which I was intending to return before leaving Japan… but as it ended up being closed for pandemic related reasons, I never got around to it.)

You can also make your way up to the lovely Tamagawa riverside if that’s more your scene, as seen PREVIOUSLY ON cityhillsandsea.

All About Musashi Nakahara Station

Last week’s Musashi entry, Musashi-Kosugi, has a plethora of trainlines running through it. I didn’t really go into a great lot of detail about these lines because they’re mostly unimportant for our purposes.

Except for the Nambu line, that is. Let’s have Wikipedia explain:

The name refers to the southern(Japanese: 南) part of the ancient province of Musashi(Japanese: 武蔵) (now Tokyo and northern Kanagawa prefecture), through which the Nambu Line runs.
Wikipedia entry about the NAMBU LINE

The Nambu line starts in Kawasaki and extends north to Tachikawa. There are four Musashi stations along the line – Kosugi being the first, and Mizonokuchi the last. Nakahara is number two.

While the walk along the Tamagawa in their general direction is very enjoyable, especially on a sunny day, there’s not really a whole lot exciting happening at any of these Musashis.

Unless you’re into your soccer.

Of course, that’s all quite some way from the station. The main attraction at the station itself might at first seem to be the uninspired grey cuboid monolith of the Fujitsu building just opposite the entrance, but a much better Fuji can be seen on a clear day from the platforms inside:

That’s really all there is to set Musashi-Nakahara a little bit apart from the crowd. I’d add that, should you walk from here to Musashi-Shinjo, you’ll get a couple of good opportunities to see the Nambu line trains up close as their depot is between the two stations:

Station Rating

I’m being uncharacteristically lenient here – 1.5 of those stars are from the proximity to Todoroki Park, and if we’re being strict about it… Musashi-Nakahara’s not even that close. Not a bad place, not a good place – just a place.