The arcades cross each other. The shopping streets of Ichibanchō, Vlandome among them, are covered for all weather, and they meet at a crossing rather than running as a single line. Because there is a roof, the flow of people does not change when it rains or snows, and that has underwritten winter trading in Sendai for decades — a fact more consequential than any individual shop along it.

International brand stores and businesses that have been trading here since the Edo period stand along the same street, together with places serving the local specialities, grilled beef tongue among them, so the range of ages represented in the frontages is unusually wide. Aoba-dōri Ichibanchō station is about a minute away on foot, two subway lines cross here, and the district is central enough that people have a genuine choice of both employers and housing nearby. During Tanabata and the New Year sales the arcade itself becomes the venue, with the roof serving as the ceiling of the event.

A covered shopping street shuts the weather out of the sales floor. Once customers can arrive on a snowy day as easily as on a fine one, the pattern of trade becomes predictable, and predictability is what allows a shop to order stock and roster staff with any confidence. That is the actual function of the structure overhead, and it is an economic one rather than an architectural one. It was not built to look like anything in particular; it was built so that a Tuesday in February would resemble a Tuesday in June closely enough to plan around.