China and Japan Town in San Francisco!
This is my first post on figure.fm, I hope I do it right ^^;
My family and I have recently come back from California, and while we were there, we got to visit China Town and Japan Town!
We were all stoked to see this place, the only China Town our family had been to was the one in NYC, but we go there too often to say that we'd miss it. This was a nice experience~
This was the only anime and manga goody shop I found there though XD I thought they'd have more, but I was surprised to find that they didn't. Maybe I missed them around the corner or something, haha!
There were jewelry shops galore in China Town, I think that's what stuck out to me the most out of anything else. Despite all teh sales they had going on, I didn't get anything.
We had roast duck soup for lunch that day! It was a bit chilly out but that really hit the spot!
Once we were done checking out China Town, we headed over to Japan Town. This was in front of a Japanese Mall that I take you guys inside of now.
Despite it being a Japanese Mall, there weren't many... erm... shops. It was filled mostly with restaurants with displays just like this one. We were being tortured with the yummy looking food since we were already full from eating our lunch. If only we'd have known, we would've waited!
More pics over at my blog, http://vixums.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/chinatown-and-japan-town/#more-60
Looks like you had fun. Visited the Chinatown in SF before, but it didn't interest me. Never really walked around J-town, though my relatives go often. Since you were there, you should have visited the new entertainment complex New People World in J-town.
Well hopefully I'll go back sometime soon, I'll try to check that place out!
I have seen a few anime/figure shops in Chinatown but I guess they can be difficult to find. When you go there, you have to be aware there is the touristy Chinatown and then the "real" Chinatown. I have to admit I don't really remember where the stores are exactly since I don't go to Chinatown very often.
As for Japantown, the bottom floor of Kinokuniya is pretty good place to find anime/manga stuff. I usually like to look at the anime magazines but the last time I went there they didn't really have a good figure selection. I would say last year they definitely had a better selection even if it wasn't a huge variety of things. It's where I got my Max Factory Haruhi and Revoltech Danboard. These days it seems they don't really have any figures at all. Also, it is not as impressive as other Kinokuniya bookstores I have been to. Downstairs there is also a toy store which sells various anime things, though they seem to specialize more in models. I don't really go there at all. Upstairs there is Japan Video. They have all kinds of anime and other Japanese videos (including hentai and JAV -_-;). They also have a small selection of figures which seems to focus on more mainstream things like Final Fantasy but I have seen interesting stuff there from time to time. To the the left of the entrance is a board where they post pictures of cosplayers. It's always interesting to go by there even though I never buy anything. A little further down there use to be a pretty large store with anime stuff had a lot of soundtracks and music CDs but it seems like it went out of business and was taken over by some sort of Sanrio store or something. Next to that is a store which sells figures and I think it is called JPN Toy. The last time I went there, the selection seemed kinda boring to me and anything I was interested in was pretty expensive. There used to be a manga cafe next to JPN Toy which sold a small selection of figures but it went out of business.
So even though it seems like you may have missed some stuff, I wouldn't be too worried. You definitely didn't miss out on anything really amazing as you can see I'm not too excited about any of the stores I listed lol. It looks like you had a fun time anyways.
I know what you mean about that. In the city, Chinatown has one specific street, Elizabeth, and that's where all the anime and manga and figure goods can be found! I was worried it would be like that in this one since we knew nothing about it, we wouldn't know where to go. Haha, we did have fun, but it is kind of disappointing to go to Japan town and just get sushi and some random restaurants. They need to do something about that :(
I thought that it was really great. Compared to any other place I have seen, Japan Town in San Francisco was the best.
Maybe you were expecting too much. We are in America, not Japan after all.
Checked out the Nippon-Ya store from your blog and they have a website to order from. Ordered some mochi right away as I am addicted to the stuff.
I LOVE MOCHI!!! I had no idea they sold the stuff there, I would've packed up on some before we left!
Chinatown in San Fran wasn't that interesting for me. The one place I do remember quite clearly is the tea shop with many different tea leaves. Other than that, nothing... its because I live in a community with a large Asian population.