Japan 2025 Photos Part 3 - Sendai City

I didn't quite know what to expect from Sendai. I’ve been to many different Japanese cities on my previous two trips to Japan, but Sendai feels different from all of them. It’s not big, sprawling, and filled with neon lights like Tokyo. It doesn’t have the food and drinking culture of Osaka, nor is it filled with cultural relics like Kyoto. But Sendai has its own unique charm in its size and layout. It has its own foods and its own cultural identity. It takes pride in the cultural landmarks it has preserved and the foods it specializes in. And it offers the shopping and fashion of Tokyo, just on a much smaller scale.

That first day in Sendai, I was immediately struck by the feeling that if I were ever to spend months or years living in Japan, it would be in a place like Sendai.

Sendai Asaichi Morning Market is the first of the smaller markets in Japan that we visited. I have visited the more congested and touristy Tsukiji Outer Market before it moved and became an even worse tourist hell than it was before the pandemic... so it was a nice change of pace to visit the markets in the less touristy areas. They still had all the stuff you would expect without the massive price gorging.

After getting breakfast in the fish market we called a cab and took it up to one of the main attractions in Sendai, the sight of the old Aoba Castle.

The Eagle of the Shochu Monument used to be at the top of the monument before the Great East Japan Earthquake. The result is an odd looking but preserved monument.

Being the former site of the castle the location was at the highest point in the city, with views to match.

The castle itself is... no longer there. Just the footprint remains.

Of course where we have lack of castle... we have the most important combination of Japanese culture. Vending machines and Pokemon.

The location of the former keep of Aoba Castle is now the location of Miyagiken Gokoku Shrine. It enshrines the Kami of "martyrs of the state" and it is a very pleasant modern looking shrine.

From the Aoba Castle site we walked down the mountain, past the soon to be closing city museum, and stopped for a drink at the Sendai Ryokusaikan Visitor Center which had location information as well as some examples of local art and culture.

It's just a nice touch that city welcome centers are clean, well decorated, and informative. So much of Japanese culture is filled with pride for what they do and the well designed, spacious, beautiful welcome center shows how much pride the people take in their city. it was enough to leave an impression, as it should, so it certainly worked.

We left from there and continued our walk through some residential neighborhoods and climbed the world's worst hill.

In order to visit the Zuihōden (Mausoleum of Date Masamune) and its surrounding temples and shrines.

The grounds of the Zuihōden itself is incredibly impressive. But after walking down a mountain, through a residential neighborhood, up the world's worst hill... I was not in the mood to be impressed by a massive series of steps.

We took the scenic, forest path around the other shrines which were erected for other, less famous members of the Date clan and came down into the Okosamagobyō, the graveyard of the children of the Date clan.

Exhausted from a full date of exploring we took a taxi back to our hotel in order to search for something to eat. Enjoy the video of our adventures around Aoba Castle.