North Miyagi · TomeNo.840★★Open in map →
Toyoma Meiji Village
— Tome's street of Meiji-era public buildings
The Meiji state built its school, police station and prefectural office in this small Kitakami river town, and all three are still on the street they were built on. Tome opens them on one combined ticket.
- FromSendai Station
- ~97 minExpress bus from Sendai
- Get off atToyoma Meiji-mura (Sendai–Toyoma express bus)
- On foot
- Toyoma Meiji Village
The sweet spot
Tome is not on a Shinkansen line and the town does not trade on scarcity; the buildings are signposted, ticketed and open to anyone. What makes the walk different from a reconstructed village is that nothing here was moved. The school, the police station and the office hall are on the plots they were built on, in a town that still uses the street.
Where it is
23 more notes in Miyagi · open the map →What to look for — in walking order
- Police Museumthe former Toyoma police station, a Western-fronted prefectural cultural property
- Mizusawa Prefectural Office Memorial Hallthe office of the short-lived Mizusawa prefecture, behind a timber gate on the street
- Buke-yashiki streetthe samurai quarter of long white walls, running north toward the school
- Toyoma Education Museumthe Important Cultural Property school, built in a U around a gravel court
How to actually get there
- Sendai Station → Toyoma by Higashi-Nippon Kyuko express bus.
- Get off at Toyoma Meiji-mura, in the middle of the district.
- Walk north past the prefectural office hall and the samurai walls to the school.
- Return down the same street to the stop for the bus back.
- Express bus from Sendai
- Higashi-Nippon Kyuko runs an express coach between Sendai Station and Toyoma, about 97 minutes end to end and with no change on the way. It sets down at the Toyoma Meiji-mura stop, which is inside the district rather than on its edge, so the walk begins where you step off.
- Return from Toyoma Meiji-mura
- The same express service runs back to Sendai from the stop you arrived at. Read the posted return times before you start the walk rather than after, and build the visit around the departure you intend to take.
About the place
Toyoma sits on the west bank of the Kitakami, with the river plain on one side and the Kitakami mountains on the other. The old quarter is called Teraike, and it is unusually legible: a straight run of street with a samurai district of long white walls along one side and the public buildings of the new Meiji state along the other. The school is the set piece. It is built of unpainted timber in a U around a gravel court, with an open corridor running the inside of the U and a balcony over the front porch, and it is a national Important Cultural Property. The police station and the prefectural office hall stand further down the same street.
How to enjoy it
The buildings were keeping hours of 9:00 to 16:30 when checked, and a combined ticket covers the six of them, so the visit reads best as one continuous walk rather than a set of separate stops. Give the school more time than the others; the open corridor and the balcony are the point of it. Read the return coach timetable before you buy the ticket.
Background & history
In the reorganisation that followed the end of the domains, a short-lived prefecture called Mizusawa was drawn across what is now southern Iwate and northern Miyagi, and its office stood in Toyoma; the hall survives as a memorial museum. The school beside it went up in the same Meiji decades, timber built to a Western plan by carpenters who had trained on temples, and it carries national Important Cultural Property status. The police station of the same era is a prefectural cultural property. Together they date the street to the Meiji years of 1868 to 1912.
Before you go
- Cash
- Each building sets its own admission, and a combined ticket covers the group of them; buy it at the first door you go through. Carry cash, because this is a small rural district and the ticket desks are staffed rather than automated.
- Good to know
- The buildings keep their own closing days, and the walking between them is outdoors. Northern Miyagi is cold and holds snow through the winter months, so footwear matters on the gravel and the unpaved verges.
- Another way
- By rail, take the Kesennuma Line to Yanaizu Station and a local bus on from there. By car the district is a short drive from the Tome interchange on the Sanriku Expressway.
- After you get off
- The Toyoma Meiji-mura stop is in the middle of the district. The police museum lies south of it and the school north, so the street can be walked in one line and then back to the same stop.