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Tokyo's Only Beach Prohibits Dipping Face in Water
By wchung | 04 Jun, 2025
Tokyo residents can enjoy a beach in the city’s downtown area for the first time in nearly a half century — as long as they don’t put their faces in the water.
The artificial Nishi Nagisa beach opened on July 15 at the Kasai Marine Park in Edogawa Ward, the easternmost of Tokyo’s 23 wards. The 200-acre park is about six miles from Tokyo Station and had opened in 1989. The beach section is on Tokyo Bay on the ward’s southernmost tip, between the Arakawa and the Edogawa, two of the rivers flowing into the Bay. The beach is just across a small inlet from Tokyo Sea Life Park.
The local families seeking to escape the summer heat at the beach must contend with some unusual restrictions. They can only swim between the hours of 10 to 3 on Saturdays and Sundays, and only on the condition that they don’t dip their faces in the water.
Presumably the restriction is to prevent painful contact with stingrays that proliferate in the water. Before the beach was opened to swimming a civic group called “Furusato Tokyo o Kangaeru Jikko Iinkai” (Tokyo Hometown Planning Committee), which has spent five years to create the beach, put up stingray nets.
Aside from Tokyo Sea Life Park, a 2,200-ton aquarium featuring 80 tuna and 540 other species, the park features a Seaside Birdlife Park and a 384-foot Ferris wheel thought to be Japan’s second biggest. The subway station for Kasai Marine Park is between the stops for the Tropical Plant Dome and Tokyo Disneyland.
Nishi Nagisa Beach in Edogawa Ward is the first swimming beach to open in downtown Tokyo in a half century.
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