Where to live in Sendai

Japanese leases run two years and renew with a fee — kōshinryō, typically one month's rent — rather than rolling on automatically. Tenants have strong protection against eviction and can normally leave on one month's notice. Sendai uses the Tokyo format: a refundable shikikin deposit plus separate non-refundable reikin key money, though the large student population means zero-reikin listings are common, especially in western Aoba. The two Sendai-specific steps are the coastal hazard-zone check and the filled-land check, and they apply to different halves of the city.

1. 1

   Check the coastal designation before you look at anything east of the Tōbu Road

   On 16 December 2011 Sendai designated a strip of coastal Wakabayashi and Miyagino wards as a disaster hazard zone under the Building Standards Act — the city's category 5 zone — in which new residential building and residential extension are prohibited. The boundary was drawn where the city's reconstruction planning predicted tsunami inundation would still exceed two metres after all planned defences were complete, and households inside it were supported to relocate. Existing property outside the zone is a normal rental decision; land inside it is not residential land. The city publishes the designation, and any competent agent knows it.

2. 2

   Check the filled-land mapping before you take a hillside flat

   This is the check that matters for far more renters than the coastal one. Large parts of the 1960s and 1970s hillside new towns in western Aoba, Taihaku and outer Izumi were built by cutting and filling terraces, and those embankments suffered large-scale sliding damage in the 1978 Miyagi-ken-oki earthquake and again on 11 March 2011 — damage concentrated inland, well away from the tsunami. Sendai publishes mapping of large-scale filled development land alongside its other hazard maps. A finished street tells you nothing about what is beneath it.

3. 3

   Ask for the construction confirmation date, not the completion date

   Japan's shin-taishin seismic standard applies to buildings whose construction confirmation was granted from June 1981, so a block completed in 1982 may still have been approved under the old code — the listing year can mislead by two years in the direction that matters. For wooden houses there is a second line at the 2000 revision, which added ground-survey, foundation and hold-down requirements. In this city, agents expect the question and answer it.

4. 4

   Establish whether the address is a subway address or a bus address

   The Namboku Line runs north–south and the Tōzai Line east–west, and they cross at Sendai Station. That is the entire rail network. Everywhere else is buses, which are reliable but infrequent in the evening and complicated to learn. The difference between a seven-minute walk to a subway station and a fifteen-minute walk to a bus you have to look up is the largest daily-life variable in a Sendai search, and it is worth more than the rent difference between two flats.

5. 5

   Expect a guarantor company, and know refusal still happens

   Most landlords require a guarantor and, since you will not have a Japanese one, a guarantor company stands in for roughly half to one month's rent plus an annual renewal. Some landlords still decline foreign tenants, which remains lawful in Japan. Tohoku University's large international population means the agencies around Kawauchi and Aobayama handle foreign tenants routinely, which is a good reason to start there.

6. 6

   File the move-in notification within fourteen days

   Moving means a move-out notification at the old office and a move-in registration at the new one, both within fourteen days, with the residence card updated at the same counter. Moving between two Sendai wards still needs both. Where you are registered on 1 January also determines which municipality bills your residence tax for the whole following year.