Sendai travel guide

Top 10 sights in Sendai

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   1© Hideyuki KAMON from Takarazuka / 宝塚市, Hyogo / 兵庫県, Japan / 日本 · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Sendai Daikannon Temple

   A white-robed Kannon a hundred metres high, built in 1991 and visible from most of Sendai, which appears without warning at the end of suburban streets. A spiral stair inside climbs to the shoulder, past a hundred and eight Buddhas.

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   2© 掬茶 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Sendai Castle

   The castle of Date Masamune, the one-eyed lord who founded Sendai in 1600, on a bluff above the river. The buildings burned in 1945 and only the stone bases and walls remain, with his equestrian statue looking out over the city and the Pacific.

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   Taga Castle

   A fortified administrative centre built in 724 as the base for Japanese expansion into the north, and one of the three great ancient sites of the country. Its south gate has been reconstructed and the Manyo botanical garden covers the slope below.

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   4© 663highland · CC BY 2.5

   Zuihōden

   The mausoleum of Date Masamune, the one-eyed lord who founded Sendai, rebuilt in 1979 after the 1945 air raid burned the original of 1637. The lacquer and gilding are Momoyama-style at full intensity, and the cedar avenue up to it is the best part of the walk.

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   5© Tak1701d · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Ōsaki Hachimangū

   A shrine of 1607 built by Date Masamune with carpenters borrowed from Kyoto, and the oldest surviving example of gongen-zukuri — two halls joined by a stone-floored passage. It is a National Treasure; the Dontosai fire festival on 14 January draws men who parade near-naked through the cold.

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   6© 掬茶 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Sendai City Museum

   The city museum, standing in the third bailey of Sendai Castle, holds Masamune's armour with its crescent-moon crest and the papers of the Keicho embassy that sailed to Rome in 1613 — a UNESCO documentary heritage listing. It shares the hill with the castle ruins.

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   Shiogama Shrine

   The salt shrine of Shiogama, guardian of the seas and of the salt-making the town is named for, reached by a stone stair of two hundred and two steps with the harbour spread out at the top. A rare Shiogama-zakura blooms here in late April.

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   8© Naokijp · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Sendai Tōshō-gū

   A shrine to Tokugawa Ieyasu founded in 1654, five of whose buildings — gate, hall, lantern-lined approach — are Important Cultural Properties from that year. It sits on a quiet residential hill north of the centre and is almost never crowded.

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   Mutsu Kokubun-ji Temple

   A Shingon temple that inherits the line of the eighth-century provincial monastery of Mutsu, whose stone plinths still show in the grounds. The Yakushi hall was rebuilt by Masamune in 1607 and is an Important Cultural Property.

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    Aoba Shrine

    A shrine to Date Masamune founded in 1874 by former retainers of the domain, five years after the old order ended, near the castle he built. Its May festival, the Aoba Matsuri, fills central Sendai with sparrow dancers.

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1. 

   1© 広瀬川 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Sendai Umino-Mori Aquarium

   The largest aquarium in the Tohoku region, opened in 2015 to replace one destroyed by the 2011 tsunami. Its main tank recreates the Sanriku coast where two currents meet, and it stands beside an outlet mall on the reclaimed port flats.

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   2© Kumamushi · CC BY 3.0

   Takekoma Inari Shrine

   One of the three great Inari shrines of Japan, founded in 842 at Iwanuma south of Sendai, its approach lined with fox statues and vermilion gates. New Year draws several hundred thousand people over three days.

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   3© Asenas10 at Japanese Wikipedia · CC BY 3.0

   Sendai City Tomizawa Site Museum

   A museum built over a buried forest of about twenty thousand years ago, found when a school pool was dug in 1987 — stumps, fallen trunks and a hunter's campfire preserved in waterlogged peat. The excavation itself is the exhibit, kept in a humidity-controlled hall.

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   4© 663highland · CC BY 2.5

   Miyagi Museum of Art

   The prefectural art museum, opened in 1981 in a building by Maki Fumihiko, with Kandinsky and Klee alongside Tohoku painters. A separate wing holds the sculpture of Sato Chūryō, and the sculpture court is free to walk through.

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   5© Katz33 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Iwakiri Castle

   A Muromachi hill fort in what is now Miyagino ward, held by the Rusu family and also known as Takamori Castle. It has been a National Historic Site since 1982; earthworks and dry moats are what remain.

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   Tōmizuka Kofun

   A keyhole-shaped burial mound about a hundred and ten metres long in Wakabayashi ward, raised for a chief of the Miyagi plain around the turn of the fifth century. It is a National Historic Site and one of the northernmost large kofun in Japan.

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   Miyagi Gokoku Shrine

   The prefectural shrine to Miyagi's war dead, founded in 1904 within the ruins of Sendai Castle, on the bluff above the Hirose river. Festivals fall on 30 April, 1 May and 23 October.

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   Tōhoku History Museum

   The prefectural history museum at Tagajo, next to the ancient fortress site, covering Tohoku from the Jomon period to the modern era. A relocated eighteenth-century farmhouse, the Imanaka house, stands in its grounds.

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   Mutsu Kokubun-niji

   The provincial convent of old Mutsu province, paired with the monastery a short walk away and founded under the same eighth-century decree. It is now a Soto Zen temple, small and quiet, with the ancient foundation stones marked out.

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    10© Naokijp · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Futahashira Shrine

    A shrine to Izanagi and Izanami — the pair the name refers to — in northern Sendai, treated as a guardian of the castle town since the Date settled here. It is visited for marriage and childbirth prayers.

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