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I'd cross the ID in Seattle and Porter Square in Cambridge off the list, neither place gives any hint of being Japan Town.
Really I thought having a mall anchored by Uwajimaya in the international distric was a clue that there was a Japanese area. Anyway the International Distric in Seattle is called International Distric because it has more than one neighborhood. The Distric has China Town , Japan Town, And Little Saigon the International Distric Website shows the neighborhoods. The distric is large about 23 square blocks.
The north edge of the International District--basically from the north side of Jackson Street up around the blocks around 5th and 6th up to Main Street is considered what's left of Seattle's Japantown. There's a scattering of old Japanese businesses including one of the oldest restaurants in Seattle, Maneki's, some crafts stores, and a few sushi bars and other restaurants.
The rest of the International District is a mix of Chinese and Vietnamese for the most part=--though of course, the biggest Japanese business in the International District is Uwajimaya on the south end, the giant Japanese/Asian grocery that contains a large Japanese bookstore--though it's got more than just Japanese products(Korean, Chinese, and so on) and food---good sushi and bento from the deli and in the food court.
Isn't there a Japanese district or mall in the suburb of Gardena as well? Do people call the area on Sawtelle, "Little Osaka", I thought I read that somewhere once...
Most Japantowns disappeared after the internment era--a lot of California towns used to have Japantowns. Portland used to have a huge one as well--though it's actually located where Chinatown is located these days(Chinatown was originally to the south). I haven't been to Little Tokyo(going to go this week on my trip to LA though!)---I have fond memories growing up of going to Japantown in San Francisco though--there's a few good restaurants there that my family always goes to, and the Japanese mall(along with a sort of Japanese dollar store) is cool to check out. Actually, there's a few excellent restaurants in Japantown in San Jose as well.
Not sure about the district in Gardena, but definitely would not shock me.
I think I have heard that area called Little Osaka online, but never heard anyone call it that in reality.
Really I thought having a mall anchored by Uwajimaya in the international distric was a clue that there was a Japanese area. Anyway the International Distric in Seattle is called International Distric because it has more than one neighborhood. The Distric has China Town , Japan Town, And Little Saigon the International Distric Website shows the neighborhoods. The distric is large about 23 square blocks.
There's still a visible and palpable history there (there are plenty of prewar buildings that still have Japanese names on them and still some operating businesses), but nowadays it's very, very much more heavily Chinese and Vietnamese. The late-night Asian crowd there are largely Chinese students and Vietnamese immigrants, most of the signs are in Chinese and/or Vietnamese... Even going back to when I was a kid in the late 80's and on up to the mid-90's there were more Japanese businesses in the ID that I remember going to. The issei/nisei/sansei population in Seattle is so integrated into Seattle as a whole at this point that it's fairly spread-out and decentralized.
Boston/Cambridge's Porter Square "Japantown" is basically one half of one shopping center, comprising about a dozen businesses. We'd shop there, and any time you went in, you'd have a lot of Harvard and MIT students buying their magazines, noodle bowls, and frozen novelties or sitting down and having some udon as a group, but at the end of the day, there just aren't that many permanently-established Japanese folks in Boston in the first place.
I will say, though, that Tampopo does indeed have wicked good udon...
Not sure about the district in Gardena, but definitely would not shock me.
Gardena's Japanese district is also centered around a shopping center, with other Japanese-owned businesses (insurance, doctors, dentists, auto body shops, restaurants, etc) in the immediate area and a localized but still fairly spread-out Japanese-American population. The area doesn't really "feel" Japanese; it feels pretty Southern Californian, and that's really what most of the people in the area are... Southern Californians of Japanese descent.
There are also a lot of auto-centric import/export businesses based in Gardena - lots of tuning companies set up their subsidiaries there because of the proximity to the port at San Pedro and the Japanese community. Also, there are a lot businesses that specialize in exporting rare, classic, or trendy American cars to Japan - Corvettes, El Caminos, Camaros, classic lowriders, etc. - and import businesses that ship over more-powerful JDM engines that are popular swaps with racers.
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I think I have heard that area called Little Osaka online, but never heard anyone call it that in reality.
I have, but not until around 2005 or so; there had been some Japanese businesses on that strip on Sawtelle for many years, but it really took off more around the time that Giant Robot and a couple modern tea/pastry houses opened up and attracted a more anime/manga/pop-trendy crowd. Because of the distance from UCLA and the business hubs of the Westside and Little Tokyo, which is more downtown, it's become a popular destination for Japanese and Japanese-American people in the area - for those who aren't familiar with LA, the drive from UCLA to Downtown LA during rush hour is realistically somewhere from an hour to an hour and a half, easily. It grew quite a bit from the time I left in '07 and the time I came back in '11, though it's still contained mostly to a stretch of a few blocks along one street. The two shopping centers on either side that used to have a mish-mash of Japanese, Persian, and American businesses are now almost entirely Japanese.
There's still a visible and palpable history there (there are plenty of prewar buildings that still have Japanese names on them and still some operating businesses), but nowadays it's very, very much more heavily Chinese and Vietnamese. The late-night Asian crowd there are largely Chinese students and Vietnamese immigrants, most of the signs are in Chinese and/or Vietnamese... Even going back to when I was a kid in the late 80's and on up to the mid-90's there were more Japanese businesses in the ID that I remember going to. The issei/nisei/sansei population in Seattle is so integrated into Seattle as a whole at this point that it's fairly spread-out and decentralized.
Boston/Cambridge's Porter Square "Japantown" is basically one half of one shopping center, comprising about a dozen businesses. We'd shop there, and any time you went in, you'd have a lot of Harvard and MIT students buying their magazines, noodle bowls, and frozen novelties or sitting down and having some udon as a group, but at the end of the day, there just aren't that many permanently-established Japanese folks in Boston in the first place.
I will say, though, that Tampopo does indeed have wicked good udon...
Sounds like the Super 88 Market near Packard's Corner would basically qualify as an ethnic neighborhoods too
That place also had some great Asian food, probably some of the best I found in Boston (which I thought had a weak Asian food scene).
I have, but not until around 2005 or so; there had been some Japanese businesses on that strip on Sawtelle for many years, but it really took off more around the time that Giant Robot and a couple modern tea/pastry houses opened up and attracted a more anime/manga/pop-trendy crowd. Because of the distance from UCLA and the business hubs of the Westside and Little Tokyo, which is more downtown, it's become a popular destination for Japanese and Japanese-American people in the area - for those who aren't familiar with LA, the drive from UCLA to Downtown LA during rush hour is realistically somewhere from an hour to an hour and a half, easily. It grew quite a bit from the time I left in '07 and the time I came back in '11, though it's still contained mostly to a stretch of a few blocks along one street. The two shopping centers on either side that used to have a mish-mash of Japanese, Persian, and American businesses are now almost entirely Japanese.
I've only been there once when we went to see a movie at the Nuart... Movie was delayed so we found a sake bar along Sawtelle to kill some time. I agree it was mostly just along that strip of Sawtelle and maybe a little bit along Santa Monica Blvd.
These two nurseries I believe are very historically important to the area as a Japanese ethnic enclave:
I don't come on here too often now but I felt like it would be nice to talk about what is the most favored ''Japantown'' district in the U.S. because I was just in one a week ago.
Japantowns. There are only a few of them left in the U.S. but they are spread out all over the country. There are Japantowns and districts of Japanese-American businesses, restaurants, and residents concentrated in the following cities: San Francisco, L.A., San Jose, Cambridge, and Seattle. There are also a few smaller towns that may have a few Japanese businesses in one area with some residents of Japanese ancestry living around it, but no real official ''Japantown'' or ''Japanese district.''
Each one of them is distinct and different from one another. The one in San Francisco is said to have the largest number of stores and restaurants, mostly within a mall. I quite like that one and I go there almost every time I'm in SF. I've been going there since a young kid and I have such fond memories of it. I always love seeing the Japanese architecture, the sushi restaurants, the yummy Japanese bakery food they have there.
I like Nihonmachi in SF a lot; it's very distinctly Japanese architecture, to the point that any photos you took could pretty much pass for being in Japan. It's not just the mall itself, but some of the outlying buildings that were built by Japanese architects and builders using metric sizing and in some cases using pieces shipped from Japan. A lot of Japanese students and businesspeople move into the housing around the area, and among other things, there are multiple Japanese retirement homes, schools, temples, etc in the area. The houseware and keepsake/trinket shopping is great, they have an awesome bookstore, a Japanese hardware store of all things, and tons of amazing restaurants, but the two grocery stores there are a bit on the small side (though there are enough Chinese and Vietnamese grocers in the area that offer greater selections of produce).
LA's Little Tokyo is the largest as far as I can tell, and draws a lot of Japanese expats as well as Japanese-Americans and non-Japanese folks; it's its own, functioning nightlife hub with bars, clubs, karaoke joints and late-night restaurants and in many ways has spearheaded the revival of LA's Downtown - the Little Tokyo Lofts were an ambitious undertaking that set a trend, proving that you could attract cool, young, wealthy people to DTLA, which went pretty far against conventional wisdom up to that point. It's well known enough in Japan that it was used as a backdrop for a yakuza flick ("Brother," 2000) and is a popular landing pad for Japanese people who want to move to the LA area.
Yeah I was going to say... Been to Porter Square at least a dozen times and had no idea it was a Japanese District.
It has a few Japanese restaurants and grocery stores in that area. However they might all be inside a building. Wikipedia describes Porter Square as having a "Japantown." My friend went there and he considers it at a Japantown, through fairly small.
Not a lot of people of Japanese heritage are living in the Boston area, but Brookline has a sizable community, at about 2% Japanese. Keep in mind though, Japanese Americans make up a relatively small population of the country (0.3% of the U.S. population).
Sounds like the Super 88 Market near Packard's Corner would basically qualify as an ethnic neighborhoods too
That place also had some great Asian food, probably some of the best I found in Boston (which I thought had a weak Asian food scene).
I actually had some pretty good Thai food at Saray the last time I was out there, but I'll admit that's the only place I tried out there. I noticed there was a Vietnamese place, too, which was pretty surprising; I'll give that a whirl the next time I'm out there visiting the 'fam
Porter also has a couple pretty good Korean restuarants - Chocho in the Porter Exchange, nestled among the Japanese restaurants, had decent BBQ when I ate meat. Kaya, which is a couple blocks down Mass Ave, is definitely the largest and most formal/traditional Korean restaurant in the Boston area and also has really high quality food.
Boston has some pretty decent Chinese options scattered about and an increasing number of good Thai places - it also has a few Tibetan and Himalayan restaurants, which are tough to find in most cities. Try Annapurna in Cambridge the next time you're in town. Also, New Asia, which is along Mass Ave just outside of Harvard Square, near Mass Ave and Putnam - go on Yelp, and most of the reviews from snotty, unfunny, moron Yelpers whine about it being "boring" and not up to their asinine standards, but even considering that I live in a city that has some of the best Chinese food outside of Asia, I love going back there. Great lunch specials, a good buffet, and sublime vegetarian General Gao's/Tso's/Zor's/"chicken."
All this said... IMHO, Boston's standout exotic ethnic cuisine is Indian. The Indian restaurants around Boston and Cambridge make some pretty epic food; most of the East Asian offerings in Boston aren't up to snuff with what I'm used to out here in CA.
It has a few Japanese restaurants and grocery stores in that area. However they might all be inside a building. Wikipedia describes Porter Square as having a "Japantown." My friend went there and he considers it at a Japantown, through fairly small.
It's all inside of a shopping center called the Porter Exchange, which also has a 24 Hour Fitness, City Sports, sports bar & grill, etc. Not really a Japantown IMHO.
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I always love seeing the Japanese architecture, the sushi restaurants, the yummy Japanese bakery food they have there.
