Sendai on a rainy day with kids — how to build a day that stays dry

Decide the route before the destination

What ruins a rainy day is rarely the venue. It is the walking in between. However good the indoor attraction, twenty minutes in the rain to reach it and your children have already had enough.

Sendai is unusually good for this. A covered shopping arcade runs from near Sendai Station through to the Ichibancho district, so a long stretch of the centre can be walked under a roof, and much of the city is linked by subway. On a wet day, three rules do most of the work:

1. Move by subway.
2. Walk only where there is an arcade.
3. Stay somewhere longer.

Give up on covering a lot of ground. On a rainy day, doing less is the plan, not the compromise.

One place in the morning, not three

Every transfer in the rain costs energy, so commit to a single place for the morning. Somewhere hands-on beats somewhere you only look at — children forget the weather when they are doing something rather than viewing it.

Younger children need somewhere that works entirely indoors. School-age children last longer where there is something to operate or experiment with. In practice you are more likely to run out of time than to run out of interest.

Two o’clock is the hard part

Rainy days tend to collapse in the afternoon. The morning has been used up, it is still raining, and it is too early to go back. Put something seated into the plan before you set out and the day holds together.

A planetarium show, or somewhere that combines a meal with a performance, is strong at this hour: no walking, no rain, and a reason for children to sit still. On a wet day those three things matter more than the subject matter.

Umbrellas and bags

Small things ruin whole days, so:

• A raincoat beats a child-sized umbrella. Having both hands free changes everything
• Carry spare plastic bags for wet things — including pushchair covers, which often cannot go in umbrella stands
• One spare pair of socks per child. Wet socks end days
• Not every building has an umbrella stand. A folding umbrella is less trouble