Sendai, Yamadera & Yamagata
The Cliff Temple & the City of Trees

The temple that anchors this whole trip — and the reason many people come to Tohoku at all. Founded in 860 AD, Risshaku-ji clings to a rocky cliff among ancient cedar forest. You climb 1,015 stone steps, rising about 330 metres, to reach the Godaido hall jutting out over the valley below. This is where Matsuo Basho wrote his famous haiku about the stillness and the cry of cicadas in 1689.

Aoba Castle was built by Date Masamune, the one-eyed warlord who founded Sendai. The keep itself is long gone — destroyed by fire and war — leaving stone walls and foundations atop the hill. But the star is the bronze statue of Date Masamune on horseback, wearing his unmistakable crescent-moon helmet, and from the castle grounds the whole of Sendai spreads out below you.

This is why Sendai is nicknamed the "City of Trees" (Mori no Miyako) — a broad boulevard where rows of zelkova trees form a green tunnel right through the centre. In summer it's a shady place to stroll; in winter it transforms into the stage for the Pageant of Starlight, with around 480,000 LED lights strung through the branches. It's the city's favourite meeting and photo spot.

One of the "three great views of Japan" (Nihon Sankei) — a bay studded with more than 260 small islands crowned with green pines, scattered across calm water. The best way to take it in is a sightseeing cruise that weaves between the oddly sculpted islets. On shore, the historic Zuiganji temple and the red Godaido pavilion are worth a stop. It feels a world away from the city.

Step off the train in Yamagata City and a short walk brings you to Kajo Park, the former site of Yamagata Castle (Kasumigajo). Today it's stone walls, moats, and a beautifully reconstructed gate turret — now a central city park, and one of Yamagata's finest spots for cherry blossoms in spring. It pairs naturally with a Yamadera morning to round out a full day.

A hot-spring village that looks like it stepped out of an animated film — rows of three- and four-storey wooden Taisho-era ryokan line both banks of a stream deep in the mountains. After dark, when the gas lamps glow and reflect off the snow, it becomes the onsen scene even the Japanese dream of. It rewards an overnight soak in a historic inn far more than a quick day visit.

A winter-only natural wonder at Zao — fir trees on the summit get so thickly coated by freezing wind and snow that they swell into eerie white shapes locals call juhyo, the "snow monsters." Ride the Zao Ropeway up to walk among them or ski past them, and on certain evenings they're lit in colours you won't see anywhere else. It's the kind of scene that justifies a winter trip on its own.