Kawasaki

Kawasaki is largely an industrial area and residential suburb — as typical in Japan, not much distinction between the two is made. But there's one very large temple and one very offbeat shrine to draw in the occasional curious tourist.

• • ** In the shrine building you can also find a small sex museum, showcasing mostly Japanese erotic art. A few notable exhibits include a version of the Three Monkeys with two extra monkeys and life-sized brass model of a vagina; if you buy an amulet from the shop (see Buy), you're supposed to rub it against this. Opening hours are erratic, but the shrine shop attendant will usually be happy to open it up on request. Entry is free, but donations are accepted.
• • If you like to gamble, Kawasaki is also home to a horse racing track and a keirin (bicycle racing) track. The horse track is located next to the Keikyu Daishi Line Minatomachi station, while the keirin track is a 15 minute walk from the JR and Keikyu Kawasaki train stations.
• Summer fireworks displays Whilst summer fireworks are ubiquitous across Japan, especially Tokyo, the one outside Futako-Tamagawa station between Tokyo and Kawasaki is perhaps the hidden gem of the calendar. It has a "boom-factor" rivalling some of the larger ones, but is instead split into two on the roster each with half the notoriety (thus bumping it to the end of the listings) as half the fireworks are launched in Tokyo Prefecture and half in Kanagawa Prefecture. On the one night. They take turns so it comes across as somewhat as a competition of one-upmanship. Happens near the end of summer, check local schedules.

• Kawasaki's best-known event is the Kanamara Matsuri (金まら祭り), also known as the Iron Penis Festival, held on the first Sunday in April. Penis-laden temple floats (o-mikoshi) are paraded down the streets of Kawasaki and everybody gets sloshed. The festival has been to some extent hijacked by foreign tourists and Tokyo's transgender ("new half") community, who often make up half the audience, but as you can imagine the people running the show aren't terribly uptight and nobody seems to mind. Penis (o-chinko) and newer addition vagina (o-manko) boiled candy popsicles are on sale. The manko ones in particular tend to be produced in smaller quantities and sell out early in the morning, the chinko typically selling out before midday. For a souvenir to take home, pick up as traditionally dyed cloth as a headscarf... with penis insignias on it.
• Ride the '''World's Shortest Escalator''', located in the basement of the More's shopping complex near Kawasaki station. is the small, thin, dirty looking one just to the south of the two stations, over the road with the entire ground floor one games arcade. Pop down the escalator and find the lowest entrance to the underground car park and there you have it. The actual act of riding it takes 8 seconds so you can easily sandwich this into a day trip somewhere else. The legend varies considerably as to just why this thing exists, especially considering it is placed between two sets of stairs making it pointless even for the disabled. The popular version states that they simply ran out of cash and ceased construction after the 5 metallic steps were made. Local drunks may tell you tales of a child dying there. Perhaps more plausible is that they simply messed up the measurements? You decide. (In fact, it was an engineer's mistake: he found there was a structural beam in the way only after the first section had been installed. Now the city's official site has a page on the "petitcalator" under the section "Modern Industrial Cultural Properties".)
• Tour the Kawasaki Industrial Zone at night. Located on a bunch of man made islands and split up by a network of canals and bridges, the combination of smoke, piping and lighting makes it quite spectacular and a big drawcard for local photographers. The easiest way is to get there promptly is simply take the Keikyu Daishi train to the end, walk south and then find one of the east-trending roads leading on to one of the larger islands. There's a lot of long dead-ends that don't quite reach the islands so print off an aerial photo or map from Google Earth or Yahoo! Maps beforehand. The more luxurious way is a nighttime boat cruise or Hato bus tour: the latest unusual craze for Japanese domestic tourists in 2010.

Previously long thought of as a working-class, blue collar, industrial city with little to offer in terms of the sophistication of Tokyo or the internationalized flair of Yokohama, central Kawasaki was revitalized and is a modern city. The area around the station is quite clean and modern, very safe and convenient and offers good value in terms of eating establishments. You will not find much in the way of notable or must-eat culinary restaurants but you will find very competent and reasonable dining, particularly on the east side of the station and in the Azalea Underground Arcade connected to the east exit of the station, where about 40 restaurants line on a straight corridor.

Wakamiya Hachiman has a wonderful selection of amulets promising fertility, sexual prowess and protection from disease. Prices ¥500-1000, and some of the revenue goes to HIV/AIDS research.

In festival time, a little market selling penis-shaped candies and other sexual paraphernalia pops up on the shrine grounds.

There is no compelling reason to stay here overnight and most visitors daytrip from Tokyo, but if you are splitting time between Tokyo and Yokohama and your destinations are on the JR Tokaido Line or the Keihin Kyuko Line and the hotels in Shinagawa are all sold out, Kawasaki might be a good alternative as there are many inexpensive business hotels in the Kawasaki area. Outside of the central business districts there's a large highwayside cluster of motels in Shin-Maruko, near the Tama River.

!-- Keikyu --

The surprisingly rustic Keikyū Daishi Line (京急大師線) putters through people's backyards, and is useful for the three-stop trip from Keikyu Kawasaki to Kawasaki Daishi. From Shinagawa, it takes about 20 minutes total at a cost of ¥230.

Kawasaki has been an important city of trade since the days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, as a stop on the Tokaido road between Tokyo and Kyoto. With a population of over 1.5 million (2020), Kawasaki is the ninth most populated city in Japan, but it's sandwiched between Japan's two largest cities, Tokyo and Yokohama, and consequently ignored by the vast majority of tourists zooming between the two. There are attractions, though, that make Kawasaki a unique side trip, including a Buddhist temple that ranks as one of Japan's top three most visited temples during the New Year, a Shinto fertility shrine that hosts one of Japan's wackiest festivals, and an underrated open-air museum.

Geographically, Kawasaki lies in the middle of the Keihin (Tokyo-Yokohama) region, separated from the Tokyo metropolis by the Tama River, which it roughly follows, and is divided into seven wards. The eastern part of Kawasaki, along Tokyo Bay, contains industrial work areas and blue-collar housing, while more upscale buildings can be found in the Tama Hills further west and inland.