Food and Eating - Clothes - Household Goods - Recorded Music - Electronics
ALTs have only one meal a day during the week which they don‘t have to worry about. – that’s lunch. Once the school term starts all students and teachers are provided with the standard school lunch. It’s cheap and convenient and (occasionally) pretty good.
If you have a special diet and would like to maintain it, please be aware that doing so will take some effort. Japan is known for its lo-cal cuisine, however, vegetarianism is still a concept not quite fully understood. Some of our teacher who came as vegetarians are changing their diet somewhat to accommodate life in Japan.
Apart from school lunches,
you will be looking after yourselves for all other meals. There are many interesting
places to eat around Sendai, but don't overlook the opportunity to cook for
yourselves. Most department stores have supermarkets in their basements, and
other supermarkets such as COOP and Poro Roca are
available.
You can also buy a variety of foods, fresh meat and vegetables at these places to prepare at home. There is a traditional market near the central railway station which bustles with activity and where you can get some great fresh food bargains. Local fruit and vegetable and convenience stores are plentiful can be very useful at times, but their prices are sometimes quite a bit higher than the supermarkets and traditional markets.
If you're looking for specific ingredients from your home countries which can't be located in the general supermarkets, you can try Meidiya and the Yamaya chain. Another option is joining the Foreign Buyer's Club from which you order and plethora of (mainly US) goods (including washing powders, over-the-counter medicines and even books) which will be delivered to your door. The only catch with this service is that they try and get you to do most of your ordering in bulk, often necessitating purchases of cartons of goods. Going in on a carton of food with other ALTs can help matters.
Clothes
As noted earlier, there are a variety of stores selling clothes here, but for western styles and sizes, you may want to check out the branches of US stores (Eddie Bauer, LL Bean) in Sendai.
Ichibancho Shopping!
For those people who need to buy things to make their houses livable, the first stop would be the ‘sayonara sales’ of departing ALTs that will be mailed out with this handbook – you can’t beat the prices they are offering. Apart from this, there are a number of stores in and outside of town where you can buy basic items. A good place to start for things would be the department store Daiei or (even cheaper!) the 100 Yen shops where many things can be picked up reasonably.
There are branches of the
US Tower Records and the British HMV stores in Sendai,
with regular CDs around the ¥2400 mark. Cheaper CDs are available through some
discount stores. Tower Records also offers a reasonable selection of magazines
and books. 
For those with a taste for electric consumables, Sendai has two electronic stores with a host of goodies. These are the local Yodobashi Camera and the national chain, LAOX. Both stores stock a huge range of electric products at prices comparable (or cheaper) to home. Be aware that anything you buy here might not be compatible, power-wise, with your system back in your home countries.