San Francisco’s Japantown is also known as Nihonmachi.
The main thoroughfare is Post Street, between Laguna Street and Webster Street. Its focal point is the Japan Center (opened in 1968), the site of three Japanese-oriented shopping centers and the Peace Pagoda, a five-tiered concrete stupa designed by Japanese architect Yoshiro Taniguchi and presented to San Francisco by the people of Osaka, Japan. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japantown,_San_Francisco,_California)
GENTRIFICATION in NIHONMACHI; There is a common worry among the residents of Japantown that Korean businesses will soon colonize Japantown. On top of the influx of Korean residents are also Japanese Americans who move away and don’t resettle in Japantown. In addition, the Japanese American Religious Federation built a complex for low-income and elderly people, but because it cannot be exclusive to Japanese people, African Americans, Whites, and people of other ethnicities also moved in. (from the Global Ethnopolis)
Executive Order 9066. I can’t begin to fathom how it felt be pushed into the camps, let alone survive, and especially how difficult it must have been to come back to your home in a country that racially profiled you and marked you as a foreigner.. And for the U.S to pretend that it never happened, for the next generation to grow up with the prejudice and the burden of CHOOSING between Japanese and American, remembering what happened and the suffering it caused the generation before. It must take strength to hold your head high and keep pushing through those tragic events of history, and even more strength to know the struggles and appreciate the history of your people.
Another thing Amy & I noticed was that many people who were eating in the restaurants were White. See Amy’s blog for the explanation! She articulated it so well.
And to finish off the day, we all went to dinner at Sushi Tani’s !
— Joy
