Sendai, Japan: Date Clan Castle Town, Zuihōden Mausoleum, and Tōhoku Cuisine

Aoba Castle (Sendai Castle), on a wooded bluff above the city in the Aobayama area, was dismantled during the Meiji period and largely destroyed in World War II, but the site preserves the castle foundations, the original stone walls of the second enclosure, and a commanding view over the Hirose River valley and the city below. The equestrian statue of Masamune Date — wearing his distinctive single-crescent helmet — stands at the main viewing point and is Sendai's most reproduced image. The Sendai City Museum at the castle site holds a good collection of Date clan artifacts, armor, and documents relating to the castle's history and the samurai culture of the Tōhoku region.

Zuihōden, in the hills south of the castle, is the mausoleum of Masamune Date, completed in 1637 in the opulent Gongen-zukuri architectural style — elaborately carved and lacquered wooden structures influenced by the Nikkō Tōshōgū, built in the same era. The main mausoleum was destroyed in 1945 air raids and reconstructed in the 1970s using photographs and measured drawings from before the war; the reconstruction is faithful and the decorative carving in vivid red, black, and gold remains impressive. Masamune's tomb was excavated during reconstruction and the skeletal analysis confirmed both his probable height and the socket where his right eye was removed (he lost the eye to smallpox in childhood, earning the epithet the "One-Eyed Dragon"). The adjacent mausoleums of his son and grandson are less elaborate but complete the ensemble.

The Tanabata Matsuri, held in Sendai every year from August 6 to 8, is Japan's most famous bamboo festival — enormous decorative bamboo poles festooned with paper streamers, origami, and woven ornaments hang from every building and arcade in the city center, creating an immersive overhead environment that is unlike any other festival aesthetic in Japan. The Sendai Tanabata dates to the early Edo period and was formalized by Masamune's daughter as a city-scale celebration. Outside festival dates, the covered shopping arcades of the Ichibancho and Clis Road districts are the city's commercial center.

Gyūtan (grilled beef tongue) became Sendai's signature food in 1948 when a restaurant owner, unable to source the beef cuts popular in western Japan, began grilling tongue with salt and pepper in the Yakiniku style; the practice spread to dozens of specialists who now line the Kokubuncho and Ichibancho areas. The standard preparation is thin-sliced, charcoal-grilled, served with barley rice, pickled daikon, and a clear oxtail soup; the texture is firm and the flavor more concentrated than regular beef. Matsushima Bay, 30 kilometres east of Sendai and visible from the approach to Ishinomaki, holds 260 pine-covered islands and is designated one of Japan's Three Views — the combination of the islands, the shallow bay, and the Zuiganji temple complex in the town of Matsushima makes it practical as a stop between the port and the city.