Tsukuba Vacations, Tsukuba Vacation Reviews, Tourism Guide

Overview and history:
Tsukuba is a city in Ibaraki prefecture, at north east of Tokyo. The academic city is created in 1970s from several villages in the region, to take in Tokyo University of Education(University of Tsukuba from 1973) and several national research centers.
Before the open of Tsukuba Express(a fast train connects Tsukuba and Akihabara)in 2005, a travel from Tokyo to Tsukuba or the opposite costed a long time and people had to change several trains. There is a bus from Tokyo station, which still costs more than 2 hours. The new train travels in around 50minutes from the center of Tsukuba, is now becomming the main transport means between the 2 cities.

Environment:
A large part of the city is occupied by park, forest or farm, which making it a pleasant place to live. There are many apartments under construction in the area around Tsukuba station, which means that Tsukuba is becomming a bedroom suburb of Tokyo.
The population of Tsukuba mainly consists of researchers and students, and many of them comming from outside Japan. Because there are no convinient public traffic in the city, and the distance between each sight is much more larger compared with normal Japanese standard, a large number of residents have their own car and using them daily.

Education:
University of Tsukuba
NTUT
Tsukuba Gakuin University

Research:
AIST
FFPRI
GSI
NARO
NIED
NIES
NIMS
NILIM
JAXA
JST
PWRI

Companies:
Intel
Softether