Kawagoe Station West Exit

This camera watches the plaza outside the west exit of Kawagoe Station in Saitama. It is a straightforward commuter view: bus bays, taxis and the steady movement of people between the trains and the street.

Kawagoe is known as Koedo, or Little Edo, for the clay-walled kurazukuri merchant houses that survive along Ichibangai in the old centre. That district is a genuine survival rather than a reconstruction — Kawagoe prospered supplying Edo along the Shingashi River, and enough of it escaped both the wartime bombing and postwar redevelopment to keep its character.

The station itself is a modern commuter hub, roughly thirty minutes from Ikebukuro on the Tobu Tojo Line, and the west side is the quieter of its two exits. The historic district lies a walk to the northeast, so most sightseeing traffic uses the east exit instead.