Miyagi

Most Japanese cities of this age grew as a tangle of lanes around a fortification. This one was planned: broad avenues set out deliberately when the domain was founded, and later planted along their length with zelkova, which is why the centre is green in a way that surprises people arriving from the station.

The practical value of that history is that this is the most comfortable base in the north. The grid is walkable, the restaurant scene is a proper city one rather than a tourist strip, the airport is joined to the centre by a short rail link, and the bay that most visitors come for is a local train ride away. If you are building a trip across the wider region, sleeping here for several nights and travelling out each day beats moving hotels — which is not true of most of the prefectures around it.

Two days is enough for the classic version and it is a strong two days: Sendai and Matsushima, no car, both reachable from the same hotel. Sendai to Matsushima-Kaigan is about forty minutes on the local line, which makes the bay a half-day rather than an excursion.

Four days lets you add the interior and the coast properly. A workable shape is Sendai and the bay for two days, then Naruko for a night — about an hour and a half inland by train — for the gorge and the hot springs, then back through Shiroishi or out over the mountains to Yamagata. Zao is the other direction and wants a car or a seasonal bus; from Sendai it is roughly ninety minutes to the mountain road, which is closed in winter, so the frost-covered trees people come for in February are approached from the Yamagata side instead.

One day, if that is all you have, is Sendai plus Matsushima and nothing else. It works.

Sendai is the easiest place in Tohoku to reach: the Tohoku Shinkansen puts it about an hour and a half from Tokyo, and Sendai Airport is joined to the station by a 25-minute rail link. Local JR lines then do most of the work — the Senseki line reaches Matsushima-Kaigan in around 40 minutes, and the Tohoku Main Line and Rikuu East line cover Shiroishi and Naruko. This is one of the few Tohoku prefectures where a standard itinerary needs no car at all. You will want one for the Zao Echo Line, the Kurikoma highlands and the smaller Sanriku ports, and the Zao mountain road is shut by snow from November into April.

This is the Tohoku prefecture where you genuinely do not need a car. Sendai is ninety minutes from Tokyo by shinkansen, the airport has a rail link into the station in twenty-five minutes, and the local lines cover Matsushima, Shiogama, Shiroishi and Naruko without much waiting. For a first trip, do not hire anything.

A car earns its keep for three things: the Zao Echo Line in its open season, the Kurikoma highlands, and the smaller Sanriku ports north of Ishinomaki, where the rebuilt coast is best seen by driving it. Note that the Zao mountain road is closed by snow from around November into April, so the case for a car in winter is much weaker than the map suggests.

Hot-spring towns usually have one source and one character. The gorge town in the north-west of this prefecture has several distinct kinds of spring water surfacing within a short distance of each other — different mineral content, different colour, different feel — which is unusual enough that bathhouses there advertise which sort they have rather than simply that they have one.

That changes how to visit. Rather than booking one inn and staying in its bath, take a day pass or pay individual entries at two or three houses and notice the difference; the towns are small enough to walk between them. Go for the autumn colour if you can, when the gorge itself is the reason to be there, and treat the ride up from the coast as part of the visit rather than as transit — it climbs steadily out of the plain and the change in landscape is abrupt.

August 6th to 8th, unless Tanabata is why you are coming. Sendai's festival is the largest of its kind and the city is full, expensive and slow to move around for those three days and the ones either side.

Otherwise Miyagi has few genuinely bad weeks, which is a real advantage over the rest of the region. The one to watch is the gap between the end of the oyster season in March and the greening in May, when the coast is grey and the mountain roads have not reopened. And if the frost-covered trees on Zao are the reason for the trip, note that they form in February and that the direct route from Sendai is shut in that season — plan the approach before booking the flight.

Gyutan, thick-cut beef tongue grilled over charcoal, was invented in postwar Sendai and is still served as a set with barley rice and oxtail soup. Matsushima and Ishinomaki supply oysters from October to March, eaten grilled in shacks along the bay. Zunda is mashed young edamame, lightly sweetened, and it goes into everything from mochi to milkshakes. Sasa-kamaboko, the leaf-shaped fish cake sold in every station, began as a way of using up surplus flatfish in the Meiji period.

Miyagi is the mildest part of Tohoku because the Ou mountains take the Sea of Japan snow before it arrives. Sendai sees some snow but not much, and January highs sit around 5°C. Summers are warm rather than punishing, in the high 20s. The Tanabata festival takes over central Sendai on August 6–8 and is the single busiest date of the year. Naruko gorge colours in late October, a fortnight ahead of the lowlands. Oysters run October to March. The snow-covered trees on Zao form in February, best reached from the Yamagata side of the border.

A first visit belongs on the bay. Matsushima's scatter of pine-topped islets is one of the classic three views, it is half an hour from a major city, and it can be done by boat, on foot and from a temple veranda in a single afternoon. Pair it with two nights in Sendai for the beef tongue, the wide tree-lined avenues and the mausoleum on the hill, and you have a trip that requires nothing of you logistically.

Return visits should go inland and north. Naruko's gorge in late October, several distinct kinds of spring water within a few kilometres, and a wooden-doll craft still being worked — that is a better weekend than the bay for anyone who has already seen the bay. Further north, the rebuilt Sanriku coast asks more and gives more, and it is the part of the prefecture that most repays a second look.