Current Time in Hiratsuka, Japan

Hiratsuka lies in Kanagawa Prefecture on the Pacific coast of central Japan, about sixty kilometres south-west of Tokyo, where the Sagami River reaches the sea at Sagami Bay. It forms part of the Shonan coast, a stretch of beaches, pine groves and low hills that has been the seaside playground of the capital for more than a century. Around two hundred and fifty thousand people live in the city, and on clear days Mount Fuji rises across the bay in full view of its shoreline.

The town began as Hiratsuka-juku, one of the fifty-three post stations on the Tokaido, the great highway between Edo and Kyoto, and travellers, porters and inns supported it through the Edo period. The Tokaido woodblock prints of Hiroshige include a famous view of the place, with a curiously rounded hill in the background. In the twentieth century Hiratsuka developed as an industrial town, and the presence of a naval arsenal made it a target in the summer of 1945, when air raids destroyed much of the centre.

Out of that destruction came the city's most famous tradition. The Shonan Hiratsuka Tanabata Festival was launched in 1951 to encourage recovery, and it has grown into one of the three great Tanabata celebrations in Japan. For several days in early July the shopping streets are hung with enormous decorations of coloured paper and bamboo, some ten metres tall, made by shops, schools and companies, and well over a million visitors come to walk beneath them.

The coast is the other attraction. Hiratsuka Beach Park, the long sandy shore and the harbour draw swimmers, surfers and windsurfers in summer, and the Shonan Daira hill above the city offers cherry blossom in spring and a celebrated night view over the bay and the plain. The Hiratsuka City Museum explains the natural history and archaeology of the Sagami basin, the municipal art museum holds a collection focused on light and the local landscape, and a large summer fireworks display over the river is a fixture of the calendar.

Manufacturing remains important, with plants producing tyres, construction machinery, automotive components and chemicals, and agriculture on the fertile plain supplies vegetables and flowers. The city is also home to the professional football club Shonan Bellmare, whose stadium sits in the athletic park.

Tokai University has a large campus in Hiratsuka, and other universities and colleges are nearby, giving the city a substantial student presence and research activity.

Trains on the Tokaido main line reach Tokyo in around an hour, with direct services to Yokohama, Shinjuku and beyond, and national highways and expressways cross the area. Kamakura, Hakone, Odawara and Enoshima are all within easy reach.

Sea, mountains, a historic highway and one of Japan's great summer festivals make Hiratsuka an attractive base on the Shonan coast.