Before we visited Yamadera we spent the day in Matsushima in Miyagi prefecture. It was an amazingly beautiful seaside town about an hour away from Sendai on the train, that is famous for it's fresh Oysters, many islands and a number of rather fabulous red bridges. Matsushima got hit by the tsunami in 2011 (although the town says that the islets slowed down the tsunami a lot) and all around the town there area a lot of sobering reminders to how high the water got and the damage it caused. It was refreshing to see how well the city recovered.
I loved this city, it was cold and quiet when we went which for me had a very charming appeal to it.
