Sendai City 仙台市

Over a million people live in Sendai, the ‘capital of the forests’ (mori no miyako), the once mighty castle town (Aoba castle) of the Date clan in north-eastern Japan. Located just a few kilometers off the Pacific coast, the capital of Miyagi prefecture is now the economic and educational centre of the entire Tôhoku region. In March 2011, one of Japan’s strongest earthquakes and the resulting metre-high tsunami destroyed several city districts and large parts of Miyagi and Ibaraki prefectures.