Just took what has become my near-yearly pilgrimage to San Francisco Japantown, one of my favorite places on Earth. Where else can I watch Yowamushi Pedal at a restaurant, photograph cosplayers at the dollar store, check out the Peace Pagoda by night and eat salted cherry blossom sweets?
I couldn’t bring Japantown back home with me, but I certainly tried my best. Here’s everything that fit in my carry-on. Click the photo to see a larger view.
Dark Keroro figure — For the most part, you can buy the same models in Japantown that you can anywhere online, so it’s not worth that valuable suitcase real estate. Every now and then, however, I’ve found gems I can’t get anywhere else. Sergeant Frog figures like this one haven’t been made since 2008, and yet this one just happened to be lying around.
13 Secrets to Fluent Japanese — Before my trip, I asked my translator friend Katriel if there were any books she recommended I pick up at Kinokuniya Bookstore. Without skipping a beat, she suggested this one. So far I like the mix of no-nonsense advice and visual manga storytelling.
Kanji Practice Notebook — This is definitely for children, and features illustrations from Tales of Moomin Valley on the front and back and a grid of large, ruled squares on the inside. Now that I’m learning kanji in Japanese 102, I’m hoping to perfect my handwriting by practicing in here.
Foil origami paper — There’s a speciality shop that sells nothing but origami! I bought these cute little aqua squares in order to write unique thank you notes for Otaku Journalist-related correspondence.
Omocat “Shota” shirt — I discovered Omocat’s anime-inspired designs on Tumblr after seeing Crunchyroll PR girl Sailor Bee wearing one of his shirts. I bought this subtly subversive shirt for John and I to share. It didn’t come cheap though; at $30 it’s now the most expensive shirt I own, and it was one of the least expensive of Omocat’s offerings.
Lucky Star origami kits — Like many apartment dwellers, I don’t have a Christmas tree. Maybe this will be the year I finally get a small one. In anticipation, I bought these kits for making larger-than-usual Lucky Stars that come with strings to be hung up just like ornaments.
Korean beauty masks — There aren’t any Japanese beauty stores in Japantown, probably because everybody knows Korea has the rest of us beat at the beauty game. You can see Faye Valentine putting on a similar mask in an episode of Cowboy Bebop, but I can’t find a screenshot. Not pictured: the one I already tried. It was… slippery.
False eyelashes — These are some of the least dramatic ones they had, without any glitter or feathers or gems, but they’re fancy enough to be special-occasion-ready for any evening I want to feel like a K-pop idol.
Purikura! — 13 Secrets to Fluent Japanese tells me that purikura is a Japanese abbreviation of “picture club.” I went to Pikapika with two of my coworkers where we tried both an English language and Japanese machine. Our photos ranged from cute to pretty darn weird!
Stuff I bought but couldn’t take home: delicious Japanese food like onigiri, pork katsu curry at the anime-themed On The Bridge, and a green tea latte. You can pick up bento lunches and wagashi even at the grocery store there!
Have you ever been to Japantown? What would you buy if you went?
More of my Japantown travels:
8 Comments.
Book-Off in NYC was the center of my quasi-Japantown experiences when I lived near there, and so I inevitably grabbed rare editions of things not available elsewhere — import DVDs, the occasional model figure, soundtrack CDs.
As a complement to the book there, go check out “How To Sound Intelligent In Japanese”. I don’t know if it’s been revised recently (I think it came out in the ’90s), but I imagine it’s still valid.
@GenjiPress:disqus I’m surprised NYC doesn’t have an “official” Japantown like LA, SF, and San Diego when it has the only Book-Off and Kinokuniya on the east coast! Thanks for the recommendation.
It does — there’s a strip of midtown around that area which probably qualifies — but I tended to confine my explorations to Book-Off itself in big part because it was so reliably useful.
There are only three official ones, according to Wikipedia. Some Japanophiles in NYC ought to get on this! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japantown#North_America
Awww, I’m glad that 13 Secrets is already helping you! There’s a reason why I recommend it so highly… but for some people, it’s not what they need. I like it because it reminds us to play with the language, and presents tips for when you can’t remember – or strengthens ideas, by finding out different ways to say things. And yes, the kanji practice workbook is for children, but that being said… it’s cheap, and when you can’t get ahold of it, graphing paper (grid, or dot-grid paper) will also work well for practicing languages, especially kanji and kana.
@disqus_xx9PFWJiJh:disqus THAT EXPLAINS SO MUCH. I saw a lot of dot grid paper at the Daiso and I did not know what it was for. Anyway I like the kids’ notebook because the grids are much larger, which says a lot about my current level of mastery! I’ll try to take a photo of the inside soon.
Grid paper can also be found in non-Japanese places, though it’s a bit more uncommon: Moleskine has journals that use squared grid paper, and art stores also have a good selection (if you can find the kind with the grey background and white lines, you’ve struck gold; those are easier on the eyes).
Isn’t that the episode of Cowboy Bebop where Faye explains to Ed that all these efforts she goes through to maintain her beauty are, in the end, futile? Then Ed dances about sing songing ‘Futile!’
By the way, I tried is in google image search: cowboy bebop faye wearing beauty mask
And, there it was, 27 rows down on the search results… The book cover of a book by
“A Certain Journalistic Otaku.” :)