スミス英会話相模原校はＪＲ相模原駅から歩いて2,3分の場所にあります。私は頻繁に電車に乗りますし、毎日のように駅まで散歩や買い物等のために歩いています。必要なものは全て相模原校の周りにそろっています。しかし、最初からこうではありませんでした！私はまだ相模原駅に線路とホームしかなかった頃を知っています。駅は何年もかけて驚くような変貌を遂げました。

JR Sagamihara Station Convenience

Sagamihara Smith’s School of English is just a 2 or 3 minute walk from JR Sagamihara Station.  I ride the train often and walk to the station almost every day for one reason or another. Everything I need is so close to my school. But it wasn’t always this way! In fact, I remember there being nothing but a platform and train track. What an amazing transformation over the years.

There is a choice between using an elevator or scaling 44 steps to get to the station. Years ago there wasn’t an elevator because no elevator was needed!

JR Sagamihara Station includes a shopping mall called “Celeo”. I like to go there between classes to pick up some quick food from the first floor supermarket and various shops. 

On the second floor there is a drug store (Matsumoto-Kiyoshi), Daiso- a 100 yen shop, a barber shop, and a dry cleaners. Daiso is perfect for supplying my school with everything that I need.

The station level floor is so very tempting. There is McDonald’s, Saizeriya- a cheap and good Italian restaurant, a bakery, a Japanese/Western sweets shop, a store that sells international and Korean food, as well as three take-out shops-  sushi, tonkatsu, and yakitori.

Across from all that is Sagamihara It’s Shopping Mall, which includes Seijio Ishi, (an international supermarket), a coffee shop, another drug store, a stationery/bookstore, a shoe store, women’s fashion, etc.

On the top level there is a dental clinic, a music school, and a health/gymnastics center for women.  And there are many more shops and services that I haven’t listed!

When I look at all the progress, I’m sometimes reminded of a time when Sagamihara City and much of Japan wasn’t so clean. “Clean Japan” is everywhere now!

I am glad to have lived here long enough to have seen all this gradual change. What used to be a small town is now a thriving, clean city. Sagamihara City is good!