Higashikurume

About Higashikurume

Clear spring water is the surprise of Higashikurume. In this quiet residential city in western Tokyo, groundwater from the Musashino Plateau bubbles up along the Ochiai River and the Minamisawa woods, and in 2008 the area was named among Japan's hundred select waters of the Heisei era, a rare honour so close to central Tokyo.

The city grew from Kurume Village, formed in 1889 from ten farming hamlets, became a town in 1956 and took its present name as a city in 1970. Big housing estates such as Takiyama arrived in the post-war decades, yet pockets of the old landscape survive: the bamboo slopes of Chikurin Park, the tree-lined Nobidome Aqueduct and the farmland of Yanagikubo, home of a heritage wheat used for local noodles.

Higashikurume is about 25 minutes from Ikebukuro on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line. Come for a half day of riverside walking, spring-fed ponds and, on clear winter mornings, a view of Mount Fuji from the station.