Fujisaki Department Store

photo by 掬茶 · CC BY-SA 4.0

It began in 1819 as a fabric shop; today you can walk straight from floor -2 into the metro.

It is the home-town department store, the one people in Sendai name when they have to buy a gift. In the basement, in the food hall they call My Kitchen, you can buy vegetables, fruit and fish from Tōhoku, and there is also the counter of Saikichi Shōten of Kesennuma, the one known for the ‘golden saury’ cooked in the family sauce. Above are seven floors, and from the second basement you can go straight into the metro without setting foot outside.

The business began in 1819 in the castle town of the Date as Ebisuya, a shop selling heavy cotton and hemp cloth; it became a joint-stock company in 1912 and turned two hundred in 2019. The main building has seven floors above ground and three below, with sales floors down to the second basement. In 1973 four escalators were installed there, going up and down: the first in Japan in an arrangement of this kind. After the March 2011 earthquake it reopened in stages, with the whole building in operation from 22 April.

ℹ️ Open every day, with irregular closures; the stated hours are 10:00–19:00, extended to 19:30 in some periods, so it is worth checking for the specific day. It stands on Aoba Avenue, steps from the exit of Aobadōri-Ichibanchō metro station, to which floor -2 is linked by an internal passage, and about ten minutes' walk from JR Sendai Station. Partner car park with the first hour free, and an extra hour for every 3,000 yen spent.

🚉 Aoba-dori Ichibancho · 1 min walk

Sources: ja.wikipedia.org · more-tohoku.jp · mapple.net

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