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The story
A thread titled “I want to live in Kanagawa Prefecture outside Yokohama City” popped up on 5ch’s “Livegalileo” (live-discussion) board, sparking talk about what it’s actually like to live in places like Ebina, Kawasaki, Hiratsuka, Chigasaki, and Hayama.
Ebina drew praise for its transit convenience, but others warned about liquefaction risk and the Sagami River’s flood potential, while more practical voices pointed out that the Shonan coastal area is rough to live in without a car — leaving the thread split.
What people said
Kawasaki's air is way too polluted.
By that logic you couldn't live anywhere around there.
Just so you know — if the Sagami River overflows, it's Ebina that's in trouble, not the Atsugi side.
Not interested in Tokyo proper (Machida is technically part of Tokyo, not Kanagawa).
Walked around Vinawalk today and now I'm sure of it — this place is livable. (Vinawalk is the big shopping complex by Ebina Station)
Honestly the area along the Sagami Line isn't bad either.
Compared to Fukuoka or Kansai, Kanagawa's crime rate is nothing.
A spot that gets wiped out by the Nankai Trough megaquake… not so sure about that.
Walked around today and it wasn't even that hot.
You've got JR, Sotetsu, and Odakyu lines, and Ebina's even the starting station for the Sotetsu Line — it's the best.
JR needs to move its station already.
I'm in Hayama, and it's marked pink on the hazard map, so if a tsunami hits, I'm done for. But if you're going to live in central Kanagawa anyway, why not just live in Tokyo proper? If you're deliberately moving to Kanagawa, the coast makes more sense. Personally I think somewhere like Ninomiya is also a nice rural pick.
If it's coastal, Hiratsuka or Chigasaki would've been good calls.
Hiratsuka's fine if you're on the south side. The Beniya-cho area is a bit sketchy, so I wouldn't want to live near the north exit. (Beniya-cho is a nightlife district by Hiratsuka Station)
Haven't been to the side near the velodrome, but the area near city hall is nice.
Somewhere like Asao Ward has way too high rent.
Central Kanagawa sits on a river terrace, so past a certain slope it's all elevated plateau. (a stepped landform carved by the river over time)
Can't really blame it — the Miura Peninsula got urbanized in an era that never planned for getting around by car.
That's basically Chiba at that point.
Still, the location can't be beat — every morning I walk my dog on the beach with a massive Mt. Fuji staring right back at me.
Then why are there so many vacant houses?
Ebina's actually close to Shinjuku.
Background and Key Points
Kanagawa Prefecture is Japan’s second most populous prefecture, with roughly 9.2 million residents, but its identity outside Yokohama and Kawasaki is genuinely fragmented. “Kenou” (central Kanagawa), where Ebina and Atsugi sit, is inland river-terrace terrain shaped by the Sagami River; “Shonan,” running from Chigasaki through Hiratsuka to Kamakura and Hayama, is the prefecture’s famous Pacific coastline. Kawasaki’s coastal wards still carry the legacy of the Keihin industrial belt, a corridor of refineries and factories built through the 20th century that gave the city its old reputation for poor air quality, even though pollution controls have since brought it in line with national standards.
The thread’s real fault line wasn’t Yokohama versus everywhere else — it was inland convenience versus coastal risk. Ebina backers valued its three-railway hub (JR, Odakyu, Sotetsu) and shopping, while critics raised the Sagami River’s flood potential and liquefaction on its alluvial ground. Shonan backers cited beach living and views of Mt. Fuji, but were met with warnings about Nankai Trough tsunami exposure and near-total car dependency, since the coast urbanized before postwar road planning caught up.
What outside readers likely miss is Machida: despite sitting in the middle of this Kanagawa conversation geographically and functioning as its shared commercial hub, it is legally part of Tokyo Metropolis, not Kanagawa — an administrative quirk that trips up anyone reading the map rather than the ward boundaries. The thread also never cites actual crime statistics; the “bad public safety” claim for central Kanagawa is impressionistic, and National Police Agency data doesn’t support ranking it above Fukuoka or Osaka.
*This article is composed from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Livegalileo board) thread “I want to live in Kanagawa Prefecture outside Yokohama City”.
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