January is the coldest month in Sendai on every temperature column the Japan Meteorological Agency publishes: a mean of 2.0 degrees, a mean daily maximum of 5.6 and a mean daily minimum of minus 1.3. February is close behind on the mean, at 2.4, but it is warmer than January in both daily columns. The snow question has a less obvious answer, because snow falls in Sendai on 81.4 days a year and the total depth it adds up to is 59 cm.
January is the coldest month on all three temperature columns
The figures below are thirty-year normals for the 1991 to 2020 period. Every one of the nineteen columns in the Sendai table carries the same statistical period and the same sample of thirty years, and no value carries the agency’s reference-value mark, the symbol it defines as meaning a figure that cannot be used for differences from or ratios to the normals, so the columns can be read against each other without checking their footing first.
| Month | Mean (C) | Mean daily max (C) | Mean daily min (C) | Precipitation (mm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 2.0 | 5.6 | -1.3 | 42.3 |
| February | 2.4 | 6.5 | -1.1 | 33.9 |
| August | 24.4 | 28.2 | 21.6 | 157.8 |
| September | 21.2 | 25.0 | 18.0 | 192.6 |
| Year | 12.8 | 16.9 | 9.3 | 1,276.7 |
August is the warmest month by mean at 24.4 degrees. The annual precipitation normal is 1,276.7 mm, the wettest month is September at 192.6 mm rather than a summer month, and the driest is February at 33.9 mm.
Snow falls on 81.4 days, and the year’s total depth is 59 cm
Those two numbers sit in the same row of the same table and pull in opposite directions. Snow is observed on 81.4 days a year, which is more than one day in five by my own division. The annual normal for total snowfall depth is 59 cm, the largest daily total is 15 cm and the deepest snow cover is 16 cm.
| Month | Snowfall depth, total (cm) | Largest daily total (cm) | Deepest cover (cm) | Days with snow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 21 | 10 | 10 | 23.8 |
| February | 18 | 9 | 10 | 20.1 |
| March | 11 | 6 | 6 | 13.4 |
| April | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2.7 |
| May | Not printed | Not printed | Not printed | 0.1 |
| November | Not printed | Not printed | 0 | 3.7 |
| December | 9 | 5 | 6 | 17.6 |
| Year | 59 | 15 | 16 | 81.4 |
November is the row that shows the gap plainly: 3.7 days of snow, a deepest cover of 0 cm, and no printed total at all. Adding the monthly columns myself, the days-with-snow figures come to exactly 81.4, while the depth figures come to 60 cm against a printed annual normal of 59 cm. Normals are computed separately for each period, so the two do not have to agree, and the one-centimetre gap is not an error in either figure. One further column is empty rather than small in midwinter: January and February each record 0.0 days of thunder, in a table where the annual figure is 9.8 days and July and August carry 2.4 and 2.7.
The mausoleum standing at Zuihoden today was completed in 1979
Zuihoden is the mausoleum of Date Masamune, who renamed the settlement of Chiyo as Sendai in 1600 and began laying out the castle town in 1601. The building standing there now is not his. The city’s own chronology dates the completion of Zuihoden to 1979, and the same chronology records that the Sendai air raid of 1945 burned out the city centre, damaging about 12,000 households and killing about a thousand people.
The reconstruction is the reason there is anything to say about the man’s skeleton at all. What follows in this section and the next is the site’s own exhibit commentary as it stood when it was read in September 2026. The tomb chamber was opened, and the remains were recovered in unusually good condition because they had been packed in lime. From the femur, his height was calculated at 159.4 cm, which the site describes as an average adult male height for the early Edo period, and his blood type was determined as B.
The skull answered the one-eye question in 2019, having failed to in the 1970s
Date Masamune is known as a one-eyed commander, and for decades the bones could not confirm it. The survey carried out soon after the excavation found no damage to the orbital region of the skull and could not demonstrate that he had lost an eye, which is why the facial reconstruction made from 1975 onward shows him with both.
A 2019 examination by the National Museum of Nature and Science reached the opposite result by measuring rather than looking for damage. It found a difference of 2.5 mm in orbital height between the left and right sides. The reading given is that the left orbit grew normally while the right stopped growing when sight was lost, and that the difference therefore establishes the blindness from the skull itself. The cause recorded in the Date family chronicle is residual damage from smallpox.
A second reconstruction followed in 2021, supervised by an anthropologist at the National Museum of Nature and Science with the modelling done by an associate professor at Kyoto University of the Arts. A full-size model was made from a plaster cast of the skull and built up using the Manchester method together with accumulated anthropometric data. One complication is stated openly: the recovered skull is that of a man in his seventies, so the incisors had to be predicted from the alveolar region and the bite estimated in order to reconstruct a face in his forties.
Zuihoden changes its opening hours on 1 December and 1 February
The site runs two sets of hours and switches between them on fixed dates rather than by season.
| Period | Open | Last admission |
|---|---|---|
| 1 February to 30 November | 09:00 to 16:50 | 16:30 |
| 1 December to 31 January | 09:00 to 16:20 | 16:00 |
The opening time does not move; only the closing time and the last admission do, by 30 minutes each. The site also notes that the excavation film shown inside the museum ends at the last admission time, so arriving at the last admission means missing it.
It closes two days a year, and on one of them only part of the site closes
There is no weekly closing day at all: the site states that it is open every day while the facilities are in operation. The closures are 31 December, when everything shuts, and 1 January, when Zuihoden itself opens but Kansenden, Zennoden and the museum stay closed. A separate notice sets a one-day closure of the museum alone on 12 October 2026 for collection work, with Zuihoden open.
The admission table has three columns, and the third one covers two different visitors
| Visitor | Individual | Group of 20 or more | Group of 50 or more, and disabled visitors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult or university student | 570 yen | 460 yen | 360 yen |
| High school student | 410 yen | 310 yen | 210 yen |
| Primary or junior high student | 210 yen | 160 yen | 110 yen |
The third column is the part that is easy to misread: it is one rate serving two different qualifications, a group of fifty and a disabled visitor arriving alone. A separate note sets out who that covers: holders of a physical disability certificate, a rehabilitation certificate or a mental-health welfare certificate get the reduction, and so does one person accompanying them, with the Mirairo ID app accepted in place of the paper certificate. The site also blocks a common assumption about the second column. Even where a party meets the headcount, a mixed party of adults or university students, high school students and primary or junior high students cannot claim the group rate for each band.
The Loople day pass buys the twenty-person rate at the gate
Holders of the Loople Sendai one-day ticket, including the version combined with the subway, and holders of the Sendai Marugoto Pass, are charged the twenty-or-more group rate: 460 yen for an adult, 310 yen for a high school student and 160 yen for a primary or junior high student. Those are the same three figures as the second column of the table above.
| Loople Sendai | Adult | Child |
|---|---|---|
| Single ride | 260 yen | 130 yen |
| One-day ticket | 630 yen | 320 yen |
| One-day ticket with subway | 920 yen | 460 yen |
The bus itself circles the central sightseeing area in about an hour, starts from Sendai Station at 09:00, runs every 20 minutes and leaves the station for the last time at 16:00. It runs one way only, which is why the site tells visitors returning directly to the station to take a route bus instead, from a different stop. From Sendai Station the Loople reaches Zuihoden in 15 minutes and leaves a walk of about 7 minutes; a route bus takes 15 minutes to a stop about 10 minutes’ walk away; the Tozai subway line to Omachi-Nishi-Koen leaves 15 to 20 minutes on foot; and a taxi takes 10 minutes. The first car park at the entrance is free, and so are the coin lockers.
The city’s chronology dates both of its large earthquakes
Sendai’s record of shaking is in the same municipal chronology. The Miyagi-ken-oki earthquake of 1978 is entered at magnitude 7.4, with a seismic intensity of 5 recorded in Sendai and 13 deaths. The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 is entered at magnitude 9.0, with an intensity of upper 6 in Miyagino Ward, 979 deaths and 30,034 buildings completely destroyed, and the city attaches a date to that last pair of figures rather than leaving them open: they are stated as of September 2013.
Records from further north are a separate matter, and the national rankings for low temperature and deep snow are covered in Hokkaido holds 19 of the 20 lowest temperature records.
The city was 86,352 people in 1889 and a million in 1999
The same chronology tracks the population in round milestones. Sendai became a city in 1889 with 86,352 residents. It passed 500,000 in 1967. The 1988 absorption of Izumi City and Akiu Town took it to 888,000 people and 788 square kilometres, and the following year it became a designated city with 896,000. It reached a million in 1999. The five wards it was divided into on that change, Aoba, Miyagino, Wakabayashi, Taihaku and Izumi, are the five it still has, and 2019 is entered in the chronology as the thirtieth anniversary of both the designated-city status and the ward system.
City and ward offices work 08:30 to 17:00 and close at weekends, on public holidays and from 29 December to 3 January. The city’s general call centre, opened in 2020, answers from 08:00 to 20:00, and until 17:00 at weekends, on public holidays and over the new-year period.
Sources Checked
Japan Meteorological Agency — thirty-year climate normals for Sendai, 1991 to 2020
Confirmed that all nineteen columns carry the 1991 to 2020 period with a thirty-year sample and that no value carries the reference-value mark, which the page defines as marking a figure that cannot be used for differences from or ratios to the normals; the January figures of 2.0, 5.6 and minus 1.3 degrees; the February figures of 2.4, 6.5 and minus 1.1; August as the warmest month by mean at 24.4 degrees; the annual mean of 12.8 degrees; annual precipitation of 1,276.7 mm with September at 192.6 mm and February at 33.9 mm; the annual snow figures of 59 cm total depth, 15 cm largest daily total, 16 cm deepest cover and 81.4 days with snow; every monthly snow figure in the table above; November’s 3.7 days of snow with no printed depth; and 0.0 thunder days in January and February against 9.8 for the year, 2.4 in July and 2.7 in August.
https://www.data.jma.go.jp/stats/etrn/view/nml_sfc_ym.php?prec_no=34&block_no=47590
Zuihoden — visitor information, opening hours, admission and access
Confirmed the two sets of hours and their switch dates of 1 February and 1 December with last admissions of 16:30 and 16:00; the note that the excavation film ends at the last admission time; the absence of a weekly closing day; the closure of the whole site on 31 December and the partial closure on 1 January with only Zuihoden open; the museum-only closure on 12 October 2026; every figure in the admission table including the combined fifty-or-more and disabled-visitor column; the note that the three disability certificates cover the holder and one accompanying person, with the Mirairo ID app accepted; the rule that a mixed party cannot claim band-by-band group rates; the pass holders’ entitlement to the twenty-or-more rate of 460, 310 and 160 yen; the Loople fares of 260, 630 and 920 yen for adults and 130, 320 and 460 yen for children; the one-hour loop, 09:00 first departure, 20-minute interval, 16:00 last departure and one-way operation; the access times of 15 minutes by Loople plus a 7-minute walk, 15 minutes by route bus plus about 10 minutes’ walk, 15 to 20 minutes’ walk from Omachi-Nishi-Koen on the Tozai subway line and 10 minutes by taxi; and the free first car park and free coin lockers.
https://www.zuihoden.com/info/
Zuihoden — exhibit commentary on the excavation and the facial reconstructions, as read in September 2026
Confirmed that the remains were preserved by lime; the calculated height of 159.4 cm from the femur and its description as an average early Edo adult male height; the blood type of B; the 2019 National Museum of Nature and Science finding of a 2.5 mm difference in orbital height and the reading that the right orbit stopped growing after sight was lost; the statement that the earlier post-excavation survey found no damage to the orbital region and could not prove the loss of an eye, and that the reconstruction from 1975 therefore shows both eyes; the smallpox cause recorded in the Date family chronicle; and the 2021 reconstruction using a plaster cast of the skull, the Manchester method and a face reconstructed in the subject’s forties from a skull of a man in his seventies by predicting the incisors from the alveolar region.
https://www.zuihoden.com/information/
City of Sendai — municipal chronology
Confirmed the 1600 renaming of Chiyo to Sendai and the 1601 start of the castle town layout; the 1945 air raid with about 12,000 households damaged and about a thousand deaths; the completion of Zuihoden in 1979; the 1978 Miyagi-ken-oki earthquake at magnitude 7.4 with intensity 5 in Sendai and 13 deaths; the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake at magnitude 9.0 with upper 6 in Miyagino Ward, 979 deaths and 30,034 buildings completely destroyed as of September 2013; the 1889 city foundation with 86,352 residents; the passing of 500,000 in 1967; the 1988 merger with Izumi City and Akiu Town giving 888,000 residents and 788 square kilometres; designated-city status in 1989 with 896,000; the million mark in 1999; the 2019 thirtieth anniversary of designated-city status and the ward system; the 2020 opening of the general call centre; and the office hours and call centre hours.
https://www.city.sendai.jp/sesakukoho/shise/gaiyo/profile/ayumi.html
City of Sendai — ward profiles
Confirmed that the city is divided into the five wards of Aoba, Miyagino, Wakabayashi, Taihaku and Izumi.
https://www.city.sendai.jp/sesakukoho/shise/gaiyo/profile/kakuku.html
Last updated: September 2026
