Sendai is the largest city in Tōhoku, and almost nobody stops there. You change trains, you head off to Matsushima or the slopes of Zaō, and the city slides past the window. It’s a mistake, but an understandable one: Sendai doesn’t give itself away at first glance. It was flattened in 1945, rebuilt with wide, tree-lined avenues, and the best of it is neither in its center nor in its shops.
You have to go looking for it in two places that could not be more different: a golden tomb on a hill of cedars, and an elementary school left exactly as the sea returned it.
A young city, founded by a one-eyed man
Sendai doesn’t have Kyoto’s thousand years of history. It was founded around 1600 by Date Masamune, the warlord known as the One-Eyed Dragon. He lost an eye to smallpox as a child and made up for it with considerable ambition. In 1613 he sent an embassy all the way to Rome, which was not exactly standard practice for a lord from the north.
His city reflects his character: laid out straight, planned big, and always slightly apart from what the central power was doing. Sendai is called the City of Trees, 杜の都, and it isn’t a tourist slogan: the avenues are lined with zelkovas whose branches meet above the road.
Zuihōden, gold at the end of the cedars
Masamune died in 1636, at seventy. The following year, as he had wished, a mausoleum was built for him on Kyōgamine hill: the Zuihōden. Black lacquer, gilding, painted carvings, all the excess of the Momoyama period packed into one small building at the top of a stone staircase.
It was declared a National Treasure in 1931. It burned in 1945, along with the rest of the city. What you visit today was rebuilt in 1979, identically, with the same dimensions and the same decoration.
Some travelers skip it for that reason. I think that misses the point: in Japan, a building rebuilt identically is not a copy, it’s a continuation. And the staircase leading up to it, under the cryptomerias, is worth the trip on its own.
Arahama Elementary School, and what the sea left behind
About fifteen kilometers from the center, by the sea, there is an empty elementary school. On March 11, 2011, Arahama Elementary was the neighborhood’s designated shelter. Three hundred and twenty people climbed up into it: children, teachers, residents. The tsunami reached the second floor. Every one of them was rescued from the roof.
The neighborhood around it disappeared. Seven hundred houses. They were never rebuilt: the area is now off-limits for housing, a grassy plain where you can still make out the line of the old streets.
The school was preserved. The first two floors have been left as they were, walls torn out, ceilings twisted, classrooms open to nothing. The fourth floor, which the water never reached, tells the story of the neighborhood before and of the day itself. Admission is free. Open 9:30 am to 4 pm, closed on Mondays and the fourth Thursday of the month.
Fair warning: this is not a sightseeing stop, and it doesn’t fit between two errands. But if you only remember one thing about Sendai, it should be this place. To understand what happened that day across the whole northeast, read our guide to earthquakes and tsunamis too.
Gyūtan, an invention from 1948
Gyūtan is not an old dish. It was born in Sendai around 1948, in a hungry country where nothing went to waste. A cook named Sano Keishirō took an interest in a cut nobody wanted, beef tongue, and spent about two years working out how to make it good. His answer: thick slices, salt, rest, then slow grilling over charcoal.
His restaurant, Aji Tasuke, is still there. The ritual has set the same way all over town: the tongue, a bowl of barley rice, an oxtail soup, a few miso pickles. You eat it at the counter, in twenty minutes, and it’s very good.
The other local specialty is zunda, a sweet edamame paste of an improbable green. It surprises you, then it goes down rather well.
Jōzenji-dōri, the avenue that makes the city
If Sendai has a soft center, it’s this avenue. Four rows of zelkovas, a planted median you can walk along, sculptures set down without ceremony. In summer the canopy is so thick that it’s several degrees cooler than on the road next to it.
This is where the city gathers: a jazz festival in September, illuminations in December, food stalls during Tanabata. The rest of the year, it’s simply the place where you understand why Sendai is called the City of Trees.
Tanabata, three days when the city is covered in paper
Sendai Tanabata is the biggest in Japan, and it goes back to Masamune’s time. The dates have been fixed since 1948: August 6 to 8, a month after the Gregorian-calendar Tanabata, because the city follows the old calendar.
These are not garlands. They are paper structures several meters tall, hung in the shopping arcades, made by hand over months by the shopkeepers themselves, and judged every year. You walk underneath them as if through a forest of jellyfish.
Two million people in three days. If you hate crowds, this is not your week. If you want to see a Japanese city completely transformed, this is exactly it.
What’s around it, and why it makes a good base
This is where Sendai makes sense. The city is a base, not a destination, and a very well placed one.
Matsushima, half an hour away by train: a bay scattered with two hundred and sixty pine-covered islets, counted since the 17th century among the three most beautiful views in the country. Zaō, two hours away, for the snow monsters, fir trees entirely encased in ice in February. Ginzan Onsen, in the neighboring prefecture, one of the most beautiful hot-spring streets in Japan under snow. And Akiu or Sakunami, two onsen towns less than an hour away, for a night in a ryokan without leaving the area.
When to go, how to get there
The Tōhoku shinkansen takes about 1 hour 30 minutes from Tokyo, which makes a day trip possible, if a pity. The national JR Pass pays off if Sendai is part of a longer route; for a simple round trip, check our JR Pass calculator first.
In town, the subway is enough. The east-west Tōzai line serves Zuihōden on the west side and Arai on the east side, where the bus to Arahama leaves from.
As for the season: February if you’re coming for the snow at Zaō, early August for Tanabata if you can take the crowds, October and November for the autumn leaves and a quiet city. Avoid June, which is gray and humid.
Is Sendai worth a stop?
Honestly, on a first trip to Japan, no. There is too much to see elsewhere, and Sendai won’t give you what you came looking for.
On a second trip, yes, without hesitation. Two nights are enough: one day for the city and Arahama, one day for Matsushima or Zaō. You’ll see an urban Japan that is neither Tokyo nor Kyoto, a provincial city of a million people that gets along perfectly well without tourists, and a place by the water you’ll remember for a long time.
To keep heading north, read Japan in winter, and to choose your bath, the best onsen in Japan.