14 Places To Visit In Sendai

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Day Trip (3)
Monument (1)
Tombs & Mausoleums (1)
Historical Site (1)

1. Sendai Castle Ruins

2 km from city center

Historical Site

Set expectations before you climb the hill: there is no castle. It burned in 1882, the remaining Edo buildings were bombed in 1945, and what stands today is stone walls, a reconstructed guard turret, the bronze equestrian statue of Date Masamune and a viewpoint over the whole city. That view and the statue are the reasons to come. The exhibition hall charges separately, 770 yen or 1,430 with the V (Read More)R.

Top Attraction

2 km from city center

Tombs & Mausoleums

The mausoleum of Date Masamune, the one-eyed lord who founded Sendai, standing in a cedar grove up a stone stairway and painted in the full Momoyama palette of black lacquer, gold and vermilion. It is the most spectacular single building in the city. Note it is a 1979 reconstruction: the 1637 original was destroyed in the 1945 air raid. 570 yen.

Top Attraction

20 km from city center

Day Trip

Around 260 pine-topped islets scattered across a shallow bay, counted for centuries as one of the three great views of Japan. Zuiganji temple, the red Fukuurabashi footbridge and the little Godaido hall on its rock are all here. Thirty minutes from Sendai, and get off at Matsushima Kaigan, not Matsushima station. Cruises run daily, weather permitting, at around 1,500 yen.

3 km from city center

Temple

Commissioned by Date Masamune and completed in 1607, with the hall of worship and the inner sanctuary built under a single roof and finished in black lacquer and gold leaf. It is a National Treasure and it is the finest surviving Date-era architecture in the city. Free and always open, though the interior is not routinely on view. On the tram-bus loop from the station.

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5. Jozenji-dori Avenue

1 km from city center

Avenues & Promenades

A broad boulevard through the middle of the city under a canopy of zelkova trees, which is where Sendai gets its name as the City of Trees. It is the venue for the Street Jazz Festival in September and the Pageant of Starlight in December, when the whole avenue is strung with lights. Free, central, and the one part of Sendai that is itself the attraction.

2 km from city center

Museum

Built in the castle's third bailey and holding the Date family collection, including Masamune's black armour with its crescent moon crest and the materials from the Keicho mission that sailed to Rome in 1613, inscribed in UNESCO's Memory of the World. It has reopened after a long refurbishment, so guides saying closed are stale. Closed Mondays.

7. Akiu Great Falls

23 km from city center

Waterfall

A 55 metre single drop on the Natori river, 6 metres wide, designated a Place of Scenic Beauty and counted among Japan's hundred great waterfalls. There is a viewing platform a short walk from the car park and a steeper path down to the basin. It is free, and despite feeling remote it is still inside Sendai city, roughly an hour by bus, so it is not a day trip.

2 km from city center

Buddhist Temple

A Date family temple founded in 1441, with a three-storied pagoda and a strolling garden of ponds and carp that is the best small garden in the city. The grounds and pagoda are free; only the inner garden charges 300 yen, which is why some guides say free and others say paid. Not to be confused with the far more famous Rinno-ji in Nikko.

38 km from city center

Day Trip

A temple of 860 scattered up a cliff face, reached by around a thousand stone steps through cedar and rock, ending at the Godaido platform looking out over the valley. Basho wrote one of his best known haiku here. About an hour on the JR Senzan Line, and note it is in Yamagata prefecture, not Miyagi. 500 yen for the mountain gate, 200 more for the treasure hall. Icy in winter.

13 km from city center

Rocks & Canyons

A narrow gorge where the Natori river has cut potholes and smooth hollows into the rock, with a free riverside trail of about a kilometre running along it from a bridge near Akiu Onsen. It takes half an hour, costs nothing, and pairs naturally with the falls and the onsen into one loop west of the city.

13 km from city center

Hot Spring

A hot spring town 1,500 years old that the Date lords used as their private bathing retreat, sitting in the hills west of the city and still inside Sendai's boundary. Several ryokan open their baths to day visitors. Because it is a local bus ride rather than a train journey, it is the easiest way to end a Sendai day in hot water.

5 km from city center

Monument

A white statue of Kannon standing 100 metres including its base, the tallest statue of a goddess in Japan and visible from most of the city. You go inside: a lift carries you up past 108 Buddha figures arranged on spiralling floors, and small windows near the top look out over Sendai. It is genuinely strange and unlike anything else on this list.

54 km from city center

Day Trip

A cluster of five hot spring villages about an hour north, and the birthplace of the kokeshi wooden doll, still turned and painted in workshops you can watch. Alongside it is Naruko Gorge, one of the great autumn canyons of Tohoku, best in late October. Access is indirect, via Furukawa, so treat it as a full day rather than an afternoon.

1 km from city center

Observation Deck

A free observation floor on the 31st storey of the AER building, two minutes from the west exit of Sendai station, with glass on all sides looking out to the Pacific on one horizon and the Ou mountains on the other. Open 10:00 to 20:00 and closed only on 1 January. Several listings wrongly show a fee; there is none. The highest-value five minutes in the city.