Atsugi

Atsugi is a city in the hilly centre of Kanagawa Prefecture, about 45 kilometres from central Tokyo and 30 kilometres from central Yokohama. It sits at the northern end of the Sagami Plain formed by the Sagami River and reaches into the Tanzawa Mountains in the west, where parts of the city lie inside the Tanzawa-Ōyama Quasi-National Park and include Mount Ōyama. People have lived here since the Jōmon period, and in the Kamakura period the area was known for casting bells for Buddhist temples. Atsugi became a town on 1 April 1889 and a city on 1 February 1955, and it was proclaimed a special city around the year 2000 when its population passed 200,000. Despite the name, the Naval Air Facility Atsugi of the United States Navy is not in the city but on the border of Ayase and Yamato. In 2021 Atsugi had about 223,960 residents on 93.83 square kilometres.