#nihonmachi

[ourpacificadventures]

In the afternoon, we headed over to Japantown and were just in time to catch some amazing Taiko drumming in honor of customer appreciation month! The Japantown in SF is one of only 3 in the USA today and has a rich program of cultural events throughout the year.

Lunch was at a traditional-style place on "restaurant row", a line of restaurants built to mirror a street in Japan.

We spent the afternoon exploring the myriad of shops and displays in the town, and enjoying (just a bit! 😆) of retail therapy...

[bloomwithbravery]

while we were in San Jose, we stopped by japantown aka nihonmachi. it was a cool area, but we happened to go on a day when everything was closed 😫 so pro tip : don't go on a Wednesday. or at least Wednesday afternoon.

we walked up and down the main street, checked out restaurant menus, looked at the window displays and checked out the grocery store. we picked up some snacks and drinks that we normally wouldn't be able to try at home [and everything was delicious!!].

highly recommend checking this area out - I want to go back and explore some of the stores.

[kubotafinearts]

[odiggity]

Peace Pagoda

Japantown - San Francisco, CA

[rabbitcruiser]

The production of the Ford Mustang began in Dearborn on March 9, 1964.  

[jollmaster]

What were the V's mortal life like?

finally I gathered all main thoughts about them 🖤 they're all jerks and their lives weren't easy

Vox

• born in 1900 to a family of dockworkers, was the first in his family to be born in California, so-called nisei; his parents were pure-blooded japanese who moved to the USA in search of a better life; their lineage had been christian since the Edo period, despite persecution

• spent youth in Nihonmachi (San Francisco's japantown), almost from the day it was founded

• worked with machinery and electricity and was very successful, but at the same time liked to walk in the harbor watching fish being caught (he loved the pungent smell of fish)

• spoke fluent Japanese and English, used the name Cole in english-speaking society, but anyway experienced racist prejudice against himself; future-Vox real name was Koi (carp in japanese)

• after 1924, he often helped compatriots with american citizenship and practically saw the birth of television broadcasting

• by the time of WWII he already had a wife and two children; their third son was born two months before Executive Order 9066

• in 1942 family was interned and he spent two and a half years in "relocation center", while the eldest of sons was shot on suspicion of espionage

• it was then that future-Vox lost trust in any government and decided that he would gather people around by himself (he would later advocate with all his might to minimize the contact of sinners with demons and establish himself in a separate region, spreading technology and broadcasting, and would choose the name Vox, or voice)

• all these anxieties, as well as workaholism, took a heavy toll on health, and he died of a heart attack in early 1950s

Valentino

• son of a prostitute (had no idea who his father was) and inherited her beauty

• had the same name in life as when he died

• born in a Montevideo brothel in the mid XIXth century; grew up in an unhealthy situation and even saw mother working

• later his mother became a brothel owner herself, and a rather harsh one at that; her upbringing laid the foundation for Valentino's crooked understanding of the world and hierarchy

• when he was about twelve years old and was already helping in management (counting money, carrying wine from the pantry, sweeping, all that), one of the customers wanted to take him to the room, but mother heard this and made a scandal, and son wasn't touched

• unfortunately or fortunately for himself, Valentino had learned that weakness means death, and the law of force is the main thing in the world

• was quite smart in business, ran a brothel when his mother was gone (she died, ironic as it may sound, of a cold fever), and prostitutes both respected him and were very afraid of

• Valentino treated women in a purely consumer way, he was generally the kind of master who yells and then can both caress and physically use

• however, he once paid for the funeral of one of workers when she bleeded and died after abortion, and even was near her in last hour; there were rumors that this child was his too

• his response to all questions was "how damn should I know who knocked her up"

• died in a fire; one of the workers, young Theresa, locked him in, he didn't get out in time and burned alive

Velvette

• Velvette is her stage name; real name was Violet, because of unusual eye color at birth

• was born in 1960s, inherited violet eyes from father: her mother was a somali who fled the country in search of a better life, and father was a white walloon (she spoke Somaligaa with mom and French with dad)

• parents divorced when Vel was a teenager but kept a good relationship

• went to France when she grew up and planned a career as a fashion designer

• to some extent it was her eyes that got her noticed by photographers and she later had a career as a model, although she didn't fit standards for height (too short) and skin color (too dark-skinned)

• she had a hard enough time, but she had a tough character and didn't hesitate to make way by any means necessary

• however, Vel never agreed to sleep with anyone in exchange for preferential treatment: no, she's an independent woman and she'll only sleep with someone who deserves it

• planned to earn enough money, leave modeling, go back to what she had wanted, marry a nice wealthy gentleman and have a son; not that she really wanted to have a baby, this just seemed normal to her

• Vel wouldn't have been very caring soft mother, but she would have tried to provide for child, hired a good nanny and been present in his life

• at the age of twenty-five she hit a girl with a car, but bought off the court

• the girl's father couldn't relive loss and bribed one of Vel's detractors to shoot her dead

[promisecitymoments]

What is Promise City? An Examination of the Modern Lie

It was the middle years of the 21st century. As the world fell deeper into disorder and chaos, a resolution was passed by the UN - build impenetrable fortress-cities, one for each region of the world. Sworn to perpetual neutrality and serving as a grand, living repository for all cultures and peoples, Promise City is the jewel of the United Nations Megacity initiative, and home to upwards of eighty nine million people.

It is called home by people from every corner of the world, who speak every language, making it a wildly diverse place. The City was planned from the ground up, fanning out from its centre in the First District, now called the High Rise. 

The City is divided into 13 Districts, each of which serves a different purpose. From the desolate and collapsing streets of the Basilissa Exclusion Zone to the highly pedestrianised and narrow backroads of Nihonmachi District, the purpose and peoples of the City can change on an almost street-to-street basis.

Most of the Districts are partially built on or straddle the river Vitae, a huge estuary which has been artificially widened as the years have passed to accommodate the continuous traffic going to and from the City's major industrial centres and the ports of the world. It didn't start with the name, but was rechristened when its expansion began, for from the beginning it was intended to be the City's primary artery, the vein that pumped its lifeblood to its heart.

The dream of Promise broke under the weight of the modern world as the global scene made slow steps towards order and peace and a new agent of governance emerged. It took cues from the chaebol conglomerates of the Korean republic, the zaibatsus of the new Japan, the oligarchic kleptocracies of Russia and the runaway monopolies of America.

It became something new, with power transcending that of national governments. It became the modern multinational corporation, an organisational and logistical superstructure with fingers and operations all across the globe, their origins swaddled in mystery and their servants in the hundreds of thousands.

The concept of the nation-state is now a joke, a foreign idea taken seriously only in corners of the world that the average metropolitan never needs to think of. And the worst part? The people of the ever-shrinking middle class were more than keen to look the other way, as long as the wages were good and the abuses were just out of sight.

In Promise City there emerged three corporations of supreme importance.

The first was Byzantion Security Systems, an electronics, military technology and communications magnate. It was the first among equals, the largest company in all the world.

Second to it were two, ÆSIR Arms and Machinery and Tlalocan Ltd., companies which both survive on the military-industrial complex that has ripped the third world asunder. Each was like a kingdom, an empire unto itself, their CEOs like Gods among men. Their employees numbered in the indirect millions, in every corner of the earth, in every business imaginable. In the modern age, it is almost impossible to do business without crossing one of the Three, or, failing that, without crossing another of the major corporations in the world.

Their positions as the leaders of the world seemed unshakeable. They could not be touched, no matter what resistance was mounted against them. Public or private, it seemed like nothing could be done to halt the corporations.

Then came October 21st, 20XX. Judgement Day.

The City ground to a halt that cold autumn afternoon, forced to watch as a monstrous machine brought entire blocks down in its rampage. Thousands were killed in the District of Paxtonville and the High Rise almost immediately, and further thousands were displaced all across the rest of the City.

With the sudden and violent dissolution of the Byzantion Group by its former CEO/CSO Alexios Konstantinatos, a power vacuum unlike anything as seen in living memory was suddenly created in every corner of the globe.

Infrastructure totally broke down wherever Byzantion’s influence could be felt, the company’s assets were suddenly fair game to anyone who could scrape up the funds and hundreds of thousands of people, involved with the corporation at every level of production and distribution, were suddenly without work.

The world economy quickly crashed with this essential link in the global chain removed. It’s been a year and though the company’s rivals have moved fast, they are only now starting to put the pieces of the world back together.

Trade is still limited to short distances through motor convoys and trains, with international shipping having all but ceased except in cases of extreme duress, such as the humanitarian crisis and complete breakdown of civil order faced here.

In the rubble, the UN has stepped in to revive the now-paralyzed City authorities and rebuild the City’s domestic law enforcement unit, the Promise City Police Department (PCPD). However, their influence is far from absolute - running the streets are gangs of every shape, size and stripe, from typical criminal groups preying on vice and need to organised groups of political agitators and to fringe sects of complete extremists.

There is no more global order. Stability is a myth, a thing of the past. Rubble and seemingly endless corpses have done nothing to stymie the ambitions of pushers and hustlers, those obsessed with status and wealth. At the end of the day, there are still plenty of jobs out there that need doing, and plenty of people willing to risk it all to do them. The world is rudderless, the City insane…

… and in this madness there exist chances one can only dream of.

[worldbytenews]

Vandalism of public art in Seattle’s Japantown ‘a punch in the gut’

An art installation in Nihonmachi Alley commemorating the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II was smeared with black ink over the weekend. ​An art installation in Nihonmachi Alley commemorating the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II was smeared with black ink over the weekend.    The ink that blacked out the faces of a Japanese American woman and the…

[geomonjes]

Upcoming Event: Destination Nihonmachi by Koho SF

Saturday 10/26/24 5-10pm

SF Japan Town

I’ll be selling the usual stickers, prints and a couple shirt designs!

[the-infinite-corridor]

== THE PAINTED SKIES ARE THE WORST ==

For many, it’s surely nothing more than (an attempt at) a shortcut from the narrow lanes of the impoverished, cracked-sidewalked ‘deep soi’ to the bustling, modern main vain of Sukumwit Road (which may be glimpsed at a distance and even heard, but not reached; not from here); an accidental diversion through what once was perhaps meant to be a mall, some intended pedestrian thoroughfare. Some parody of social space and human Commerce.

The ranks of dimly-glowing, functionless modules that only barely suggest the familiar forms of ATMs...with no one to use them; no establishments to accept payment in any case, of any kind; the most minimally-inclined of concrete walkways that angle up to featureless landings, sporting steel guard-railings that protect no one. And it just sprawls on like that. It's ugly, in more than just the ways that can be put into words.

The painted skies are the worst: Broad, sweeping, meandering, mindless murals of no discernible subject in lurid colors, endlessly defacing the blank, massive walls and wrapping around sudden, brutal corners to wander into blind and purposeless courtyards for no eye to see, their mere suggestion of free, open aerial vistas a simpleminded obscenity in this hard and grey transitional nothing of a place.

#art #LiminalSpaces #travel #writing #WritingLife #travelphotography #GameTheoryMedia #weird #explore #Asia #Bangkok #BTS #LastKnownPhoto #Skytrain #Japanese #Nihonmachi #KnownSomeCallIsAirAM 

[smallerplaces]

Who fits Daiso outfits?

Olivia and Whitney admire the haul from Daiso, as they're the dolls in my community most likely to be able to fit into them.

On Saturday, we went thrifting in Fremont and Hayward, which was disappointing. The only fashion dolls I saw were (a) an EAH type with extremely frazzled hair and no price; and (b) a cheap blonde princess. This is a far cry from the glory days of scoring bags of articulated bodies at Eco Thrift!

However, Union City has a Daiso, a.k.a. the most kawaii place on earth. It's not as thrilling as the one at Nihonmachi, but it also doesn't require cramming oneself on the 38-Geary bus.

This Daiso had a nice selection of outfits but not the ddung-style or kuhrn-style doll (I don't recall which, but it's somewhere in that range) Licca-chan-type doll that goes with them. So without any reference for size, I took a risk on the garments that were most different from what I'm likely to see elsewhere: the hanbok and the furisode.

Olivia has a Kira head mold, so aside from being Petite, she's a good candidate to have an Asian grandmother or great-grandmother. (While Asian cultures are distinct, Olivia is a fashion doll, and deciding on her ethnic background based on what clothes fit is legit.) Whitney is the easier of the two 1990s Stacies to undress, and if everything is a perfect fit on her, I'll then worry about cultural appropriation.

Here we go!

That's a NOPE for Olivia. The Daiso garments are too small for Petite Barbie. (She later couldn't get her hands through the sleeves of the hanbok.)

Whitney fits the furisode on the "around" dimension, but it's too long on her. Somewhere on the interwebs, I'd seen a tutorial on how to fold and blouse a kimono under the obi, so I awkwardly tried that technique. With more practice, it might work better.

On impulse, I pulled out of the donate pile the doll I'd been mistakenly calling a Skipper even though I had another doll with the same face-up and knew she was a modern Stacie.

Wow. It's a perfect fit. I still don't love this doll and don't intend to keep her, but it's certain that a 9" childlike slender body type is what's wanted here.

This finding creates some challenges, so I need to think about plausibly Asian face-ups at 9" size. Mattel has done at least one Asian modern Stacie, but the face-up and lack of articulation doesn't have me rushing to the store. I'm okay with this quest taking a while -- two garments don't take up much room in clothing storage.

The hanbok is also the biggest win on a modern Stacie body. So right now, we're going to pretend that the girls have been invited to a cultural festival and asked by their hosts to wear gifts of traditional attire. Long-term, I'll be working on tracking down a more plausibly Asian "younger sister" or two in this size.

[swan-orpheus]

Leisurely perused Kinokuniya for over an hour. Then went to the beach. 🌊🌊🌊

[kubotafinearts]

Nihonmachi Bowl

#japanese #japan #nihonmachi #kubotafinearts

[asianamsmakingmusic]

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A post shared by Wing Luke Museum (@winglukemuseum)

The Nippon Kan Theater opened in Seattle Nihonmachi, or Japantown, in 1909 on 6th Avenue and Washington Street. Both a community center and performance theatre, the Nippon Kan stage hosted visiting master musicians, singers and dancers from Japan, providing continuing connections to the homeland, and emerging performers from within the Japanese American community, ranging from traditional biwa (Japanese bucked lute) performances to swing band orchestras. One of the businesses advertised on this screen is still open to this day in Nihonmachi and may have been featured in an earlier Jewels and Gems #tbt post! Can you guess which one? (Hint: Their ad is on the top row and features an animal.) Read more about the Nippon Kan Theatre and the beautiful screen housed in the Wing Luke Museum on our website in the Jewels and Gems section.

[rabbitcruiser]

National Bean Day 

Because National Bean Day on January 6 falls in the middle of winter, it’s the perfect excuse to cook a favorite comfort food. Wondering why National Bean Day is held on January 6? That’s the same day as the famous geneticist, Gregor Mendel, died in 1884. Mendel used bean plants and pea plants to develop theories on genetics in plants. So the formation of National Bean Day has more to do with scientific development than how good bean recipes taste. But don’t let that deter you from enjoying eating beans on this holiday!

National Bean Day timeline

7000 B.C. Ancient Beans

The native tribes of Peru and Mexico cultivate bean crops.

1551 New Varieties

The term ‘kidney bean’ is coined to differentiate the bean type from other common beans.

1734 Jack and the Beanstalk

The English fairy tale about a boy who discovers magic beans appears as 'The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean.'

1854 Two Peas in a Pod

Father of genetics Gregor Mendel conducts research experiments on heredity using different varieties of peas.

National Bean Day Activities

Attend a Chili Cook-off Competition

Perfect your own baked beans recipe

Come up with a bean-related craft idea

Beans certainly aren’t the only ingredient in chili. But as any serious chili cook knows, finding the right beans is the key to make or break your recipe. The first chili cook-off took place in 1967 in Texas, so cooks have had plenty of time to perfect their techniques … and find the best kinds of beans to use. And if you like vegetarian chili, beans will be the primary ingredient.

If chili is one of the most popular bean-based foods for people to create their own recipes, creating a personalized baked beans recipe is a close second. So don’t be afraid to experiment with some baked beans recipes on National Bean Day. Try a few different types of beans or add some different ingredients to give your baked beans recipe a unique flavor. And, if it helps, you can even sing the “magical fruit” song while cooking your recipe.

Dried beans are great in recipes, but they also work really well for creating craft and art projects for kids. For example, you could create a mosaic that includes a variety of seeds and different sizes and colors of beans. This can be a lot of fun for kids. And bean art puts macaroni art to shame, especially on National Bean Day.

Why We Love National Bean Day

There are so many different kinds of beans to try

Beans are an economical source of protein

Beans aren’t just for dinner

If you choose to celebrate National Bean Day by trying a few different kinds of beans, you’ll have a whole bunch of them to sample. Green string beans, pinto beans, navy beans, black beans, and red kidney beans are among the most popular types of beans grown in the United States.

If you’re looking to save a bit of money on your food bill, beans are among the most cost effective foods you can eat. And if you’re looking for a source of protein that’s quite a bit cheaper than beef or chicken, beans are the answer. A cooked bean’s weight is between 6% and 11% protein.

Some kinds of beans are best served for dessert. Jelly beans are one of the most popular candies around. Heck, there’s even a chili flavor of Jelly Belly jelly beans. And Boston Baked Beans are great candies too. Even though jelly beans and the candy-coated peanuts that make up Boston Baked Beans aren’t the same as traditional beans, they still taste great. So go ahead and eat some candy beans on National Bean Day.

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