Iroha Yokochō

photo by lumoplank · CC0

A hundred shop signs in two narrow alleys, and in the middle a 1948 hand-pump well that still works.

Around five in the evening the cloth curtains come out one after another and the two passages fill with people standing. At Rokkō oysters cost 100 yen each and you eat them leaning on the counter, with a 700 yen glass of sake. At midday the same alley is something else: at Hasamiya Ōtomo an egg sandwich costs 130 yen, and by two they have already closed.

It began in 1946, the year after the war, as a public market set up among the rubble of the bombing raids that had razed central Sendai to the ground, and it has worked in the same structure ever since. It is a yokochō (a post-war alley of stalls that hardened into a street) and occupies two covered passages branching off the Sunmall Ichibanchō shopping arcade, with about a hundred businesses: izakaya, that is, Japanese taverns, but also fishmongers, greengrocers, a café and a sandwich shop.

ℹ️ The alley is public and you can walk through it at any hour, but the hours are set by the individual places, one by one: the taverns open around 17:00 and keep going until 22:00–23:00, and the daytime stalls close early (Hasamiya Ōtomo is open 10:00–14:00, and only Monday to Friday). On Sundays and public holidays many stay closed. Three minutes' walk from Aobadōri-Ichibanchō metro station, about ten from JR Sendai Station through the arcade.

🚉 Aoba-dōri · 7 min walk

Sources: sentabi.jp · travel.rakuten.co.jp · sendaimiyagi-fc.jp · jl-db.nfaj.go.jp

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