Little Tokyo

[Original trip was 3 weeks ago...]

After a 45 minute freeway drive from Long Beach, we found ourselves heading towards this place...

which also leads to this place, the Little Tokyo Marketplace in downtown LA.

Here is the JANM (see my epic previous post here):

After we parked, we walked around the shops.

This was taken at the Yamazaki bakery...

Ooh, pizza pastry and hot dog things!!!!

I should have bought one of these! I wonder if they're as good as the kind they sell at Zion.

These shops were at Japanese Village which is across the street from the JANM. We ended up using the bathroom at the JANM (cleaner).

Ha ha, check out this graffiti!  For those don't know what this means, see the definition here...

After having gone to Mochilato the night before, we had to check out Mikawaya (seen behind the fountain in progress)...

They got loads of ice cream flavors there...

And ice cream filled mochis as well!

They also sold snow cones...

We were still full from lunch so we only got 2 ice cream filled mochis - the chocolate hazelnut and the pistachio.

You can see my bite marks on the pistachio...

Look at this! Rainbow mochi in tiny bite size pieces! I bought two packages (one for us and one for my sis in law). Each one was a different flavor: blue = blueberry; green = green apple; white = plain; yellow = pineapple, orange = orange (duh); and pink = strawberry. Too bad they didn't have a purple variety to make the rainbow "complete"! The pieces were also very soft and squishable!

This place did not like me...

I was able to snap a photo of these Engrish bags in the store...

I was reprimanded by the shop owner for taking photos of these bobblehead toys. Look at them! These cute characters are reading whilst sitting on the toilet! I felt like a criminal! At least he didn't make me delete them!

This poster was on a red column at Japanese Village Plaza...It's one of the columns for the tower that you see there.

Art work depicting the contributions of the Issei, pioneer Japanese immigrants in the U.S. near the red tower.

The JANM's new exhibits, "Textured Lives" and "Mixed". Loved their recent exhibit on Giant Robot's Biennale when we went two months ago! Can't forget David Choe's exhibit with the closeups of the juicy vadge and the "starfish"!

Right next to the JANMS is this Buddhist temple:

The impressive entry way...

Our primary reason for visiting Little Tokyo was Fugetsu-do which is just a few steps away from the JANM. Here's some street art...

and graffiti...(this was taken near the parking structure across the street):

Here it is...Fugetsu-do (check out my original post from a couple of months ago):

As you can see by the sign, the shop has been in operation for more than 100 years.

Since it was one week before Easter, they had a cute window display. Awww, look at these bunnies gathered around the mochis.

Our daughter loved these, so we picked out a couple for her...

Here are a few more pretty looking mochis. The lime one was pretty good!

And more of their offerings here. These are so pretty. I love the striped one but it doesn't have much of a flavor so we didn't get it this time.

These were Sakura mochi which are seasonal. One of them had red bean filling inside the pancake. In all, we picked out eight different types for us as well as four other kinds as a gift. Too bad they were all covered with plastic wrap. Kind of makes for ugly photos.

Here's another variety of Japanese dessert...they kind of looked like pancakes.

This is what we came for! The Peanut Butter Mochi! I'd been dreaming of eating this again! We also bought the chocolate mochi variety! They don't sell those at Hogetsu in Chula Vista. :(

After our brief stay in Little Tokyo, we hauled ass out of there to checked out other parts of downtown...

On our way to Historic Filipinotown (aka "Hi-Fi")

On another note, I thought it was cool that Kirbie of the blog Kirbie's Cravings was in Little Tokyo the same weekend we went. Hell, we may have even crossed paths. We there there on the very same afternoon! Check out her post on that visit here! We took similar photos too! She has more bakery photos though!