Sendai Views

There are two places in Sendai to get a great panoramic view of the city. Both are free and have amazing viewing platforms.

The closest to the station is on the 32nd floor of the AER building (next to PARCO). From here we can best see the east and west of the city, but there is also a window that faces north. 

The other building is SS30, which is about 15 minutes walk from the station. It also has a viewing platform on the 30th floor. Here we can easily view the eastern, southern and northern areas of Sendai. However, the elevator also affords an amazing vista of the northern area towards the mountains. This especially spectacular in winter.

Make sure you bring your camera and enjoy these wonderful perspectives of Sendai city.

The Morning Market

If you get a chance, make sure you explore the produce market in the streets behind Tsutaya and E-Beans. The area still holds the kind of chaotic ambiance that is often found in other Asian cities. It is a contrast to the otherwise pristine environment of the Sendai station area.

There are both indoor and outdoor areas to buy a variety of locally produced or grown goods. The indoor sections sells mainly seafood and seaweed. This is an interesting place to explore as we can often find grotesque scenes involving dead fish.

The outer market is mainly fruit and vegetables, but also includes a few specialty shops and cooked food outlets. This is a good place to shop for your daily needs as it is usually cheaper than supermarkets and you can be assured of quality and freshness. However, it's worth just going there to wander around and see another side of Sendai city that is often overlooked.

Exploring Sendai City

I lived in the area called Kimachi Dori for about seven and a half years. I love the trees and interesting shops along Bansui Dori. But my favorite street is Aoba Jinja Dori. When you walk from Kitayobancho station and turn right into Aoba Jinja Dori, you first find a traditional Sendai sweet shop, Kumagaiya, which began in the time of Date Masamune and, across from that, a shop that sells Japanese antiques and other handicrafts. It’s pretty cool and a good place to buy a present for foreigners. As you keep walking, you go past Sendai Forum movie theater which shows more interesting movies than the bigger theaters. There are also some very nice cafes in this area. Further down the street, you can see some old houses and businesses that have been operating for hundreds of years; for example, futon makers and soba mills. The most impressive is the more than 100 year old Yokoyama miso shop, which is located in a beautiful old okura (storehouse). The owner lives behind the store in a huge, traditional house built in the Taisho era. At the end of this street is, of course, Aoba Jinja (shrine) on Kitayama. It’s a peaceful place to visit, but it’s walking there that I enjoy most.

Sendai also has some unique markets. One of them is the antique market at Toshogu shrine on the fourth Sunday of every month. In this beautiful setting, we can buy anything from old stamps and post cards to old wooden furniture and kimonos. I always find something interesting to buy (a wooden medicine box, an old magazine) and it’s a great way to spend a Sunday morning. There is also

 a market at Yakushido in Wakabayashi ward on the 8^th of every month. Here, in the temple grounds, you can buy homemade food, like bread and jam, as well as one-off, useful handmade gifts. It is quite large and fun to explore on a day off.

In my free time, I sometimes like to just go to an area of Sendai that I’ve never been to before and explore it; for example, one time I went to Kawaramachi by subway. Near the station, there is a very old sweet shop that sells a lot of handmade kinako (soya bean powder) sweets and has a small museum at the back. The building itself is really beautiful and it stands next to a small river with a huge cherry-blossom tree, which is picturesque when it blooms in springtime. From here you can walk back downtown through the interesting main street of Aramachi, where I particularly enjoyed the Chinese supermarket.

There are some magnificent historical sites like Zuihoden and Osaki Hachiman shrine, and these are good recommendations for people who are visiting Sendai for a short time. But what I like about Sendai is just exploring different areas and discovering unique shops, cafes and markets.

The one thousand Buddha statues of Sendai

First a little bit of history… When Date Masamune made Sendai his capital in 1600, the name of this city was written as 千代 (which literally means "a thousand generations"), because a temple with a thousand Buddha statues (千体 sentai) used to be located in Aobayama.  Masamune changed the kanji to 仙臺, which later became 仙台 (which is literally "hermit/wizard", "platform/plateau" or more figuratively, "hermit on a platform/high ground"). The kanji was taken from a Chinese poem that praised a palace created by the Emperor Wen of Han China, comparing it to a mythical palace in the Kunlun Mountains. It is said that Masamune chose this kanji so that the castle would prosper as long as a mountain inhabited by an immortal hermit.

To my surprise, these one thousand statues (or ‘sentai’) still exist in Sendai today. They are kept at a small temple called Daiman-ji at Mukaiyama, next to Atago shrine. Because I am very interested in history (especially of the place where I live), I visited this temple last month.

The temple is about a ten minute walk from Atagobashi station. Once you get to the main gate, it is quite a hike up the many steps to the top of the hill. On the way, a unique pet cemetery can be seen. At the peak, we can find the main temple complex overlooking Sendai city and one of these halls houses the statues. Unfortunately, this hall was locked and we couldn’t enter. There was, however, a grounds keeper taking care of the main hall. We asked him if it was possible to see the 1000 Buddhas. He told us that they usually open the hall on special days for public viewing, but he was nice enough to open it especially for us. 

The wooden Buddha statues are kept behind glass in the small hall. They are only about twenty centimeters tall, but even at first sight they are impressive. There are one thousand statues standing in rows, with around four hundred originals, dating from before the time of Date Masamune, and the remainder modern replicas.   The original statues are beautifully detailed and the wood is of a darker tone than the newer ones. The room is dark and the general ambiance is overwhelming.

It was a very rewarding experience to see the small wooden figures that hold so much relevance in the city of Sendai. I can truly recommend a visit to this temple (even if you are only slightly interested in history), but make sure that the hall will be open on the day you go there.

The easiest way to get there is to take the subway from Sendai station and get off at Atago Bashi station (2 stops). Then go up the stairs to Atago shrine. From here you can walk through to the temple.

Christmas in Sendai

Well, it won't be long until we say goodbye to the year to the snake. And, as is evident on the streets of Sendai, Christmas we pass this way before too soon. If you've lived in a Japan for a while, you'll know that the 25th of December is not a big deal here. We just go about our life as usually, working or going to the gym, often forgetting that it's our most 'important' holiday. 

Actually, in my first year in Japan, I found the Sendai approach to Christmas a little offensive. People really get into the glitter and present buying without any understanding or respect for the history. Not being religious myself, this wouldn't ordinarily bother me. But the paradox is that Japanese hold their own cultural traditions in such high esteem and would never tolerate even a slight mockery being made of them. And I do think that decorating a city purely for the sake of spectical and commerce while being completely ignorant to its origin (even proudly proclaiming 'I'm not a Christian"), is making a mockery.

However, that doesn't mean that Christmas in Sendai is disappointing. There are still plenty of events and the atmosphere leading up to the 25th is enough to satisfy our Yuletide nostalgia.   The decorations in the AER building this year are particularly impressive. 

Also, the light pageant in Jozenji Dori usually begins around the 12th of December, but recently it starts a little earlier. It draws huge crowds but never fails to impress. There's also an evening parade over the long weekend (21st -23rd).

Enjoy your Christmas in Sendai and I hope it's a happy one. If you know of any events happening this year that expats might be interested in, please let us know...