Is Tohoku worth visiting?

Question:

I'm currently studying abroad in Japan at the moment. I was recommended to join clubs on campus so I'm going to a few to try them out. The travel club could potentially be fun - you travel with club members to the destination, split up into groups, and do your own thing (though there will be things everyone will do together, like major tourist destinations). The people in it also seemed nice and fun. Things were very awkward at first (random American wandering in and asking to join your club for a day apparently gets a lot of stares), but got a lot better as they went along and it became enjoyable.

However, the actual trip part itself is a bit iffy. Their next planned club trip is a one week trip to Tohoku next March. It was cost a few hundred dollars that could spent in other parts of Japan. I personally don't know much about Tohoku at all other than it's a more rural part of Japan, colder, and was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami. Is Tohoku worth visiting? Also, most of it all ruined still or will things be fairly well on the way to recovery since I'd be going there one year later?

Answer:

Tohoku is a really nice area, like the rest of Japan.

Sendai is a cool city. It's quite compact. If I had the choice though I'd go during cherry blossom season, which is later than March, or during the Tanabata Festival (one of the biggest Tanabatas in Japan).

I guess if you were going to visit the coast, it would be to see the devastation and rebuilding.

Matsushima is a very famous place in Japan, one of the old top 3 beautiful sites - a bunch of small islands off the coast, not far from Sendai. I would imagine that would be interesting to see. Good oyster from there too, but I don't know how that's been affected by the tsunami, if oyster farming is back to normal yet or not.

Downtown Sendai itself wasn't affected too badly, but there's only so much to see there. It's not exactly packed with tourist sites.

I think going could be fun, mainly for the socializing. But, yeah you could spend that few hundred on something else.

You could always go south to the warmer weather. You didn't say where you are now. Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Kagoshima, Okinawa, ... Sometimes you can get cheap trips to Taiwan (much warmer than Japan), or South Korea (sometimes colder, but a different place anyway).