Things to Do

Karaoke

There are a number of places close to Yamagata station as well as around Nanokamachi.

Mega Crayon (or "Car park Karaoke," as it is known in the JET community) is located just off Nanokamachi and is definitely one of the cheaper options at around 2,000-3,000 yen for unlimited curry, drink and singing time.

Mega Crayon offers a drink, curry and snack bar for customers.

There are a few karaoke places in front of the station (look for the massive カラオケ signs) with great service, but they can get a little pricey on weekends.

Cinema

Solaris is located underground in Kajo Central near Yamagata Station, and shows a good mix of Japanese and Foreign Films. Ticket prices are approximately 1,500yen but food and drink are significantly cheaper than you will find in most western countries.

Forum is located between the Ekimae area and Nanokamachi and has a wider range of foreign movies than Solaris, some with subtitles, some dubbed. Solaris has movie night specials. Girls' Night, Guys' Night, Couples' Night, etc. If you go on these days you can get discounts on movie tickets. Tickets for day-time showings are really expensive (about 1,700 yen), but after 6 pm the price drops to 1,200 Yen. Make sure to go later or on the special nights to save some money.

TIP: make sure to get a stamp card when you visit either theater for the first time. You get a stamp for each movie you see and you can get things like free popcorn and free movies if you collect enough stamps.

Museums

In Kajo Park, the Yamagata Prefectural Museum offers a mix of natural and anthropological history, with everything from Jomon period clay effigies to fossils of ancient marine life, and taxonomical displays of local butterflies, and photographs of early modern Yamagata town life. 

Moving just east of Kajo Park, through the Seimon or Main Gate of the former Kajo Castle, you can visit the Mogami Yoshiaki Museum, which commemorates the feudal lord most responsible for the economic and social development of Yamagata city. It provides a fascinating look into the Yamagata of old.

If you’re interested in art, Yamagata-ken has a number of art galleries, each dedicated to a certain genre or artist. In Yamagata City itself, you can view a range of 19^th and 20^th   Japanese and European works of exceptional quality at the Yamagata Museum of Art, also immediately east of Kajo Park.    The European painting collection is comprised of works by French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, including Manet, Pissaro, Cezanne, Monet, Degas and Renoir, as well as the works of Modernist masters like Picasso, Klee, Roualt and Chagall.   The museum is also home to the intriguingly diverse sculptures of early 20^th century father and son artists Taketaro and Takezo Shinkai, as well as a range of Japanese ink paintings, literati paintings and painted screens from varying periods.

A little north of the city, neighbouring Tendo is blessed with four small galleries that each hold exhibitions worth seeing.  The first is the Tendo Hiroshige museum, dedicated to ukiyo-e (woodblocks of the floating world or pleasure world of Edo-period Japan). The prints on display are from the workshop of Ando Hiroshige and his followers and are rotated every few months. As Hiroshige considered among the very finest practitioners of this form, it’s a unique and interesting visit.

Beside the Tendo Dewazakura sake brewery, you can visit the adjoined museum, a delightful Edo-townhouse style building complete with stone garden, tatami and Japanese ceramics, as well as contemporary art exhibits from Japanese artists.

Just across the road, you can find another gallery, consisting wholly of work by this unique Tohoku painter, with winter scenes in vivid ice greys, navy blues and reds.

Finally, the Tendo City Art Museum has alternating exhibitions of design, illustration textiles and more. All these small galleries are a short fifteen-minute train ride from Yamagata Station.