Sendai Morning Market (仙台朝市) 仙台朝市
Three slices of tuna belly for 650 yen, standing among the stalls; it is closed on Sundays.
It began in 1945, just after the end of the war, as a small market of stalls in front of Sendai Station, which the bombing had razed to the ground: people called it ‘the open-air market’, and until the seventies goods were sold literally on the ground, in the alleys. The shopkeepers' federation was set up in 1985 and became a consortium in 1992. In Sendai they call it ‘the city's kitchen’, and it is the last neighbourhood market left in the centre; the name ‘morning market’ now only tells you where it comes from, because it is a permanent market, open from morning to evening, not a stall that packs up at midday. The fish comes from Sanriku, the coast to the north.
Miyagi
Sendai
