🛸 Oddity

Tendo, the Shogi-Piece Town

📍 Yamagata, Tendo

The town that carves about 95% of Japan's shogi (Japanese chess) pieces leans all the way in — giant chess pieces on the streets, shogi-shaped everything, craftsmen you can watch at work, and an April festival played on a board of costumed humans.

If a town can have a hobby, Tendo’s is shogi — Japanese chess. It produces roughly 95% of all the shogi pieces in Japan, and it celebrates that fact with a wholehearted, slightly silly enthusiasm that makes it a delight to wander.

Why It’s Interesting

The whole town is in on the joke: giant shogi pieces stand in squares and parks, the manhole covers are chess pieces, and shogi motifs decorate the station and shops. You can watch master craftsmen engrave pieces by hand, try carving your own at a workshop, and learn the game at a small museum. The grand finale is the springtime Human Shogi, in which a live game is played out on a giant outdoor board by people in full samurai costume as the “pieces.” It’s the kind of single-minded local obsession that’s pure Cinnamon Land.

Best Time to Visit

Year-round for the craft and workshops; late April for the spectacular Human Shogi festival (and the cherry blossoms around it).

Getting There

Everything clusters around Tendo Station on the Yamagata Shinkansen — an easy, fun half-day.

🐿️ Cinnamon was here

Field report

Tendo carves about 95% of Japan's shogi pieces, and it wears the job everywhere: giant pieces standing on street corners, piece-shaped manhole covers, shogi-piece cakes, and workshops where craftsmen ink kanji onto blessed maple with brushes trimmed to a whisper.

I watched a master write the same character forty times, each one identical and each one alive, which is calligraphy's whole trick. In spring the town holds Ningen Shogi — HUMAN shogi, played with armored people on a giant hillside board under blossoms — which I regrettably missed and about which my journal contains only the words 'RETURN. APRIL.'

The humans who stop here are mostly shogi pilgrims; the rest of Japan hurries through to the onsens. Stop. Watch the brushes. Buy a keychain piece with your name inked by a national craftsman for pocket change.

— Cinnamon 🐿️

📸 Cinnamon's camera roll

Snapshots from our very good boy on the road.

Watching a master ink the same character forty times, each one identical and each one alive — calligraphy's whole trick, on blessed maple.

Losing to a manhole cover. My journal on the spring HUMAN shogi festival — armored people on a hillside board under blossoms — reads, in full: 'RETURN. APRIL.'

Giant wooden shogi (Japanese chess) pieces standing in a town square — The town that makes 95% of Japan's shogi pieces. Even the manholes are chess.

Mon-chan and Cinnamon the squirrel posing with giant wooden shogi pieces — Cinnamon transformed into a shogi piece and tried to promote himself to king. Denied.

🏷️ Shogi 🏷️ Craft 🛸 Oddity 🧒 Kids 💎 Hidden Gem 🏷️ Hands On

Where it is

🎨 Art

Omiya Bonsai Village

A quiet Saitama neighborhood that is the spiritual home of bonsai — a cluster of working nurseries and a dedicated museum where centuries-old miniature trees are tended like living heirlooms.

📍 Saitama, Saitama 💴 Paid ⏱ ≈ 1 hour

🏞️ Scenic

Yamadera (Risshaku-ji)

A thousand stone steps climb through cedar forest and rock to a cliffside temple where the poet Bashō once paused — the reward is a wooden hall clinging to the precipice and a view straight down the green valley.

📍 Yamagata, Yamagata 💴 Paid ⏱ Half day

🌻 Summer 🍁 Autumn

✨ Experience

Lina World

Yamagata's homegrown amusement park: a friendly, unflashy spread of roller coasters, a big Ferris wheel, a water ride, carousels and character shows — the kind of all-day, low-stress fun that's perfect for families with younger kids.

📍 Yamagata, Nakayama 💴 Paid ⏱ Full day

🍜 Food

Cherryland Sagae

A roadside park entirely themed around cherries in the town that grows Japan's finest — a Ferris wheel, a cherry museum, all-you-can-pick orchards in June, and cherry soft-serve, jam, and sweets the rest of the year.

📍 Yamagata, Sagae 🆓 Free ⏱ Half day

🌻 Summer

Nearby discoveries

🍜 Food Seasonal event

Yamagata Imoni Festival

A whole city gathers on a riverbed each September to share a single pot of taro-and-beef stew — a SIX-metre cauldron stirred by a construction crane, cooking 30,000 bowls of 'imoni' for everyone who shows up.

📍 Yamagata, Yamagata 💴 Paid ⏱ Half day 🗓 Sep 20 · 11 km away

🍁 Autumn

📜 History

Bunshokan (Former Yamagata Prefectural Office)

A grand English-Renaissance government hall from 1916 with a landmark clock tower, free to wander — marble stairs, a chandeliered assembly chamber, and balconies that make it Yamagata City's most unexpectedly elegant indoor stop.

📍 Yamagata, Yamagata 🆓 Free ⏱ ≈ 1 hour · 12 km away

🎏 Festival Seasonal event

Yamagata Hanagasa Festival

One of Tohoku's great summer festivals: for three August nights, thousands of dancers in flower-decorated straw 'hanagasa' hats sweep down the main street of Yamagata City to thundering drums and the cry of 'Yassho, makasho!'

📍 Yamagata, Yamagata 🆓 Free ⏱ Half day 🗓 Aug 5 – Aug 7 · 12 km away