Kawasaki (Japanese: 川崎市) is a city in the Kanagawa prefecture of Japan. It is within the Greater Tokyo Area. The city has a population of 1,385,000 people, making it the 9th largest city in Japan. It is on the south side of the Tama River, which separates it from Tokyo.
Kawasaki has been in important trading post since the feudal times. It was a stopover point on the Tokaido Road between Tokyo and Kyoto. Sandwiched between Tokyo and Yokohama, Kawasaki enjoyed some spillover development from these two big cities.
Many tourists often bypass Kawasaki on their way to Tokyo or Yokohama. Those who do stopover at Kawasaki will be delighted to find many interesting tourist attractions, including a famous Buddhist temple - one of the top three most visited by the Japanese during New Year celebrations, a Shinto fertility shrine and an excellent open-air museum.
You can get to Kawasaki by taking a train from Tokyo. The Tokaido and Keihin-Tohoku trains stop at the JR Kawasaki station. The Tokaido is the faster of the two, albeit by only a bit. From Tokyo Station, it only takes 15 minutes to reach JR Kawasaki station, compared with 22 minutes with the Keihin-Tohoku. Both trains have the same fare, ¥290.
Going in the opposite direction, you can also take the Tokaido and Keihin-Tohoku trains from Yokohama to Kawasaki. It only takes 7 minutes on the Tokaido and 13 minutes on the Keihin-Tohoku, and the fare is ¥210.
Planning your travel within Kawasaki
The most practical way to move about in Kawasaki is to take the train. Check the maps in the train stations for the routes in Kawasaki.
Kawasaki Daishi Also known as Heikenji Temple, this is one of the biggest temples in Kawasaki. It is dedicated to Kobo Daishi, the famous Japanese monk/scholar/poet/artist.
Wakamiya Hachiman-gu Shrine One of the most astounding shrines in Japan, where the venerated deity is a huge iron phallus.
Japan Open-Air Folk House Museum Museum displaying some twenty traditional Japanese houses from the late 17th to the early 20th centuries, brought from different parts of the country.
Festivals in Kawasaki
Kanamara Matsuri Also called the Iron Penis Festival, this is when a procession of floats laden with the phallus are paraded through the streets of Kawasaki.
Let me take you to explore and discover Penang through my series of walking tours on YouTube. You may use these videos as your virtual tour guide. At the beginning of each video, I provide the starting point coordinates which you may key into your GPS, Google Maps or Waze, to be navigated to where I start the walk, and use the video as your virtual tour guide.
Disclaimer
Please use the information on this page as guidance only. The author endeavours to update the information on this page from time to time, but regrets any inaccuracies if there be any.
Hello and thanks for reading this page. My name is Timothy and my hobby is in describing places so that I can share the information with the general public. My website has become the go to site for a lot of people including students, teachers, journalists, etc. whenever they seek information on places, particularly those in Malaysia and Singapore. I have been doing this since 5 January 2003, for over twenty years already. You can read about me at Discover Timothy. By now I have compiled information on thousands of places, mostly in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, and I continue to add more almost every day. My goal is to describe every street in every town in Malaysia and Singapore.