Tama River

In Tokyo, its banks are lined with parks and sports fields, making the river a popular picnic spot.

Extensive engineering projects in the early 20th century have dramatically reduced the amount of flood damage, although a 1974 typhoon caused floodwaters to burst a levee in Komae, washing away 19 houses.

Pollution control measures and the river's official designation as a wildlife protection zone have now led to the return of many species.

Carp, rainbow trout, cherry salmon, iwana (char), ugui (big-scaled redfin) and ayu all inhabit Tama River in sufficient numbers for limited commercial fishing to take place in upstream areas.

Recent moves to fit weirs with fish ladders have resulted in a steep increase in the numbers of ayu migrating upstream.

In the summer of 2002, Tama-chan, a normally arctic male bearded seal first spotted in the Tama River by the Maruko Bridge, became a major nationwide celebrity.

[4] In recent years the Tama River has been settled by a larger number of non-native species including red-eared slider turtles and tropical fish like piranhas.

Those higher temperatures now allow tropical pet fish abandoned by their owners to survive the cold Japanese winters.

There are also many playgrounds, park spaces and golf driving ranges found on the side of the river as it passes through the city.

High-rises were virtually nonexistent until the late 2000s, with the bottoming of Tokyo's two-decade-long real estate bubble collapse.

The live-action outdoor night scenes from the opening FMV sequence of the original first Resident Evil video game (known in Japan as "BIOHAZARD", where initial development and filming of all FMV scenes took place) were filmed near a riverbank of Tama, in heavily grassed parts of the shore's premises, roughly 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) away from Tokyo, sometime in late August/early September 1995.