J-town

I never felt much of an affinity for the Japantown mall. I didn’t quite understand it. I couldn’t figure out why someone would shop at a store called Auto Freak or why someone would choose one sushi restaurant over the dozen others that showcased the same plastic rolls and sashimi in the window that populate the small stretch of Post St.

It wasn’t until I started working at the nearby non-profit that Japantown became a part of my routine and that its quirks became something I looked forward to. My caffeine fix would come from Café Hana, my morning pastry from Andersen’s Bakery, and my lunchtime sandwich from May’s. I would spend my lunch break browsing through books at the bookstore, lost among the shelves of Japanese text until I found my way to the small English section. My mid-afternoon sugary snack—mango Hichews, lychee gummies, that weird ice cream bar thing made of a waffle-like shell with an inside coated with chocolate and a flakey vanilla-flavored ice cream but so oddly good—would almost always come from the small market with the cash registers that bring one back to Little House on the Prairie times.

This morning when I was walking through the Kitetsu Mall sipping my pre-staff meeting coffee from Café Hana (poured by the small, curly-haired Asian woman who knows that I order large black coffee) and munching my rectangular shaped cheese Danish from Andersen’s Bakery, my brows furrowed in sadness, realizing that the small, curly-haired Asian woman might not be there to pour my coffee as I step through the doorway and that the oddly-shaped pastries might be gone too.

A large portion of Japantown is up for sale and the prospective buyer has not promised to save any of it for any extended length of time. For me, this might simply mean no more ramen at Suzu, no more Nutella and banana crepes from Susie’s Crepes, and no more rice bowls at Maki. But for the larger community, especially the elderly Japanese who still reside in J-town, it’ll mean something much more devastating.