Sendai audiotours

Sendai was founded in 1600 by the warlord Date Masamune, one of the most compelling figures in Japanese feudal history, a general known as the One-Eyed Dragon of Oshu who lost his right eye to smallpox in childhood and went on to build a domain that threatened to rival Tokugawa power itself. He chose the site for its defensibility and planted zelkova trees along the main avenues, a tradition that has given Sendai its most distinctive quality and its nickname, the City of Trees. Walk down Jozenji Street in any season and the double rows of keyaki, now well over a century old in some stretches, make the city feel more like a park than an urban center.

The August Tanabata Festival draws over two million visitors with decorations of washi paper streamers and bamboo that transform the shopping arcades into something genuinely spectacular.

Sendai is also where gyutan, grilled beef tongue, was invented after the Second World War when a chef named Keishiro Sano found a way to make use of the tongue cuts that American occupation troops left unused. The restaurants clustered around Sendai station's basement and in the Kokubuncho entertainment district serve gyutan with barley rice, oxtail soup, and pickled vegetables in a combination that has become as specific to this city as okonomiyaki is to Hiroshima.