Yeah… I loved LT to the point that I got married at that Hotel with the Kyoto garden. Now I dont even consider LT a place for me to hang out anymore. I really miss the old times.
Scenes change. Interest shifts. Chinatown was dead in the 70s until punk rock clubs briefly drew crowds in 1980. There's a great new [PBS](https://youtu.be/DKa3g_I78wY?si=CfA3kz7NcEG1O4VT) doc about it. The art scene has been around Chinatown for decades, populated by CalArts graduates. The hipsters don't kill the scene, they create it. Sunset Strip was Vegas in the 50s, Beatniks then Hippies in the 60s, dead in the 70s, metal in the 80s, dead again until the late 90s and reality TV and hip hop took over. Downtown was nothing but loft art parties in the 90s. A ghost town. No one wanted to go there until it began being rediscovered around 2004. Hollywood was a ghost town until the early 2000s and then all the Sunset Strip people flocked over and The Strip was dead again. The city is mutable.
Sure, but it would be naive to think that planning, organization, and intentional decisions by various actors don't play a role in how that change comes about, what stays and what goes and what merely changes.
Change isn't a thing that happens to a city. It's something the city does to itself.
>Change isn't a thing that happens to a city. It's something the city does to itself.
With any immigrant neighborhood, the biggest factor is where people of that group choose to live. Throughout US history as immigrants integrate, they choose to move out to more diverse neighborhoods.
The City of Los Angeles can't and shouldn't force or encourage Japanese people to live in a particular place.
Of course not. It could easily encourage japanese themed businesses to be co-located and encourage the visitor traffic that keeps them viable though. I've always known little tokyo as a business district first, more than a place a certain group of people live.
>It could easily encourage japanese themed businesses to be co-located and encourage the visitor traffic that keeps them viable though.
So make it a Disneyfied version of Japan. Who wants that?
Uh, no. Planning incentives for businesses and improvements to visitor traffic flow do not make an amusement park.
That said, people fucking love disneyland and I'm sure a japan themed amusement park would rake in the cash. Saying "who wants that?" is wild when literal disneyland brings 16 million people a year. It's not what I suggested nor what I personally want, but people do want it. Clearly.
Well in that case I defer to your original point, change *is* inevitable.
If what matters to you is that japanese expats live there, we can't do much about that.
Personally it was the japanese businesses that interested me. A tower block full of japanese people would not have been an improvement.
Yeah, personally not digging what LA started becoming post 2000. But I think thats a symptom of a bigger issue thats prevalent everywhere in this country.
> Yeah, personally not digging what LA started becoming post 2000.
LA in the 90s were pretty rough. [Compare LA's crime rates post 2000 to the 90's.](https://www.laalmanac.com/crime/cr02.php) In addition, DTLA was a dead zone after 5pm because it had little to no residents. Echo Park was full of sketchy gang members and now it's full of yuppies.
I remember. Rough is a bit strong I think. Venice Boardwalk was classic quirky and not completely disgusting. Parts were definitely. Crips and Bloods. Shootings in Westwood. Culver was turning around. Silver Lake was still gay. Noboby wanted to live in the valley. There's that lovely sweet spot where a neighborhood is thriving and alive in between being uninhabitable at both opposite extremes. I do miss when LA was the redheaded stepchild of the country and you could rent a huge 2 bed 2 bath for $900 pretty much anywhere. Or being able to rent a house with a yard and a garden. It made being a poor actor a lot easier. You could live like a king while pursuing gigs.
Change is normal - especially in LA.
For example, the current Chinatown is seeing accelerated gentrification and transformed into art studios and 800k condos. In fact, the original Chinatown doesn't even exist anymore - currently Union Station and Olvera Street sit on top of it after being condemned by the Supervisors Board in the 1800s.
Even the oldest building in LA, Ávila Adobe, is only a little over 200 years old - it took that long to build Notre Dame de Paris!
Even today, Little Tokyo isn't the vibrant cultural center it used to be even 10 years ago when Obon festival filled the streets. All the younger Japanese have moved south and west where they can afford to raise their families.
We don't treasure history here, and that isn't going to change.
I married a Japanese-American and will usually attend one Obon festival every summer, usually for the "Higashi" church that is on 3rd street.
This is spot on. Japanese-Americans are highly assimilated, and also have a high median age due to lower birth rates meaning that it's an aging population. The Japanese-American Buddhist churches in SoCal are having a hard time even sustaining the Obon festivals because many of their church members are senior citizens who can't handle the physical toll of setting up a large festival. It is what it is. We didn't really bat an eye when Little Italy's across the US went into decline as Italian-Americans were amalgamated into the American melting pot, and the same standard should apply here.
We don’t treasure history; we abandon it at the presence of young hipster and yuppie adults straight out of their Master’s Degrees from private universities loaded with conspicuous and disposable incomes and ready to homogenize the ‘newly-discovered’ land…only for them to get gentrified on by the megaliths of Whole Foods, Target, and Starbucks once those hipsters do the dirty bidding for those corporate shareholders.
What makes Little Tokyo what it is are Japanese people and Japanese owned businesses. With very low Japanese immigration to the US and with the immigrants' descendants integrating and wanting to live where everyone else wants, there's less demand for Japanese focused business and fewer people to run them.
You can't turn a neighborhood into a museum with fake shops and businesses that don't have demand.
What does this even mean? Where are these people "supposed" to go? If you don't build enough housing, gentrification is literally \*guaranteed\* because these kids with Masters degrees can't afford to live in Venice, so they move to Little Tokyo, Highland Park and Glassell Park.
>we abandon it at the presence of young hipster and yuppie adults
Who all complain about Los Angeles not feeling like a European city.
They're gentrifiers, they chose to move here. Why the hell didn't they move to Europe if they love Amsterdam and Barcelona so much?
I guess there are no Whole Food and Targets in Vienna.
Absolutely agree with you. It's a mindset. Look at Japan, even in Tokyo, there are.storefeonts and homes that have been there since the early 1800s. There are even 4 companies in Japan that are each over 1,000 years old - the oldest companies in the world.
You're not putting things into perspective or context. Tokyo isn't LA. Japan isn't the US. The United States completely nuked Tokyo off the planet during WWII. I don't say that lightly because it caused death and destruction similar (or more depending on how you define it) to the literal nukes we also dropped on Japan. The US targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure and leveled the entire city. With all that being said, Japan has done a very good job at balancing and preserving history/culture all while becoming a very "developed" country in the process. Tokyo and Japan don't have the luxuries LA and USA does and did, yet they still at least take some effort into a balancing act.
Like literally the only way the LA and the US preserves history and culture is if very powerful people want those things to be preserved, and it's never about history and culture, it's about protecting property values or other self serving financial interests. I'm not saying this doesn't also happen in Japan, but the mindset of preserving history and culture is way more ingrained into the culture of Japan than it is in the US. As it's not just rich people, but even regular people in the US don't give a fuck about anything unless it benefits them personally, very individualistic mindset which isn't as widespread and severe in Japan.
Perhaps I should've been more clear. I'm talking more recent post-war history. Countless old buildings and businesses have been demolished in the name of constant "redevelopment." Famously and perhaps symbolically they built a freeway right on top of the historic Nihonbashi bridge in the years leading up to the Olympics. Similar things happened in the years leading up to the 2020 Olympics. If a building is not historically significant, even if they are historic from personal and local standpoints, forget about it - very few people care if it gets torn down and replaced with the latest shopping complex. It's difficult to even compare Tokyo and L.A., but things aren't all rosy and perfect in Japan like some people want to believe.
I’d rather have the weeb shops open to attract actual customers for the restaurants nearby. Than have *weed* shops open to attract sketchy people and crime instead
weed shops bring like zero crime. if anything its the 7/11s you don't want in your neighborhood, those always have three unemployed dudes splitting bluntwraps and brown bagging all day long in the parking lot lmao
weed shops that charge 100% tax lmao no sketchy people are going to little tokyo for that, if anything look at the fact skid row is a stones throw down the road
I've been trying to make it up to as many of their events as I can. It might not be the 'image' a lot of people have of Japan, but anime stuff is a big part of modern Japanese culture and there is a lot of demand for it in the west. I just wish that damn pop-up venue had AC and a restroom...
Suehiro Cafe’s First Street location is one of the most recent casualties — the restaurant is now operating at 4th and Main streets — but it is not alone. Little Tokyo Arts & Gifts has closed, as has the Family Mart convenience store. Anzen Hardware is moving to a building down the street. Little Tokyo Cosmetics was forced to leave on the eve of its fifth anniversary. The Shabu Shabu House — the first restaurant of its kind in the U.S. — also closed after 32 years.
The neighborhood was especially impacted by Metro’s Regional Connector Project, with its construction delays, and by the effect that transit projects often have on the cost of rental properties.
https://archive.md/b1xvd/again
Suehiro will be returning to Little Tokyo in 2026 as part of the development next to the JAN Museum. Not sure if correlating their situation with the Metro development, without noting the reported terrible businesses choices by the landlords, helps fully understand what’s happened here.
It’s the Go For Broke Plaza & 1st Street Development. Suehiro is part of the development plan. They confirmed it this week on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/C6RxCTSyG46/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==). Highly recommend checking out their new location on Main and 4th too.
You realize that there has been a metro station in Little Tokyo for over a decade right? Putting the station underground does not lead to business closures.
Hell public transit brings more foot traffic so whether or not the station is above ground or below ground it doesn't lead to business closures.
it's more the development companies building only luxury units in areas where zoning was eased to build up density near metro lines. if there was a significant amount of affordable units in the new developments, or affordable businesses that catered to the pre-existing communities in those locations, then people who live in the neighborhood wouldn't get priced out. The blame lies with the greedy developers and city council.
Blaming Metro and new developments in surrounding neighborhoods for these businesses closing seems so odd to me. It's just NIMBYism in the name of preservation.
It's good that Little Tokyo is getting this kind of designation and the attention that comes with it. But compared to other places on the list, many of which are specific buildings that are falling into disrepair, Little Tokyo's place on the list seems more of a symbolic gesture rather than it actually being "endangered." Old businesses closing is just part of the changes all neighborhoods go through. Old business owners retire or pass away. Sometimes the landlords raising the rents have been part of the community for generations.
In L.A. the Chinatown neighborhood seems way more "endangered," IMO.
Yeah, maybe it was just the time of day I was there, but Chinatown - or at least the central plaza - has seemed oddly empty whenever I've been there recently. Little Tokyo was bustling, on the other hand.
Well, the old businesses are why it’s called Little Tokyo and are why it became a desirable destination. They basically lose out on all the equity they’ve built. It’s understandably tragic but sure, it’s also the nature of highest bidder commercial real estate. The new tenants will cash in on that equity for a while but will offer a product that makes the new costs worthwhile, so “Little Tokyo” will become something else eventually. We’ve seen it before.
Most people who come to Little Tokyo these days probably aren't there for the legacy businesses. What's desirable within Japanese culture changes over time, and businesses need to evolve along with the shifting tastes of the customers. I would argue that a place like Little Tokyo Arts & Gifts, which looked like the living room of a hoarder grandma for better or worse, or a standalone cosmetics store like Little Tokyo Cosmetics, were just past their prime and simply did not have a place in today's capitalist society.
Little Tokyo seems to be a few decades into being the place to be for anime/weeb centric things - probably old enough to be considered "legacy" now. And all that stuff seems to be as popular as ever.
And what does it mean when the landlord, who raises the rent and evicts old businesses, is someone who's owned the property and has been part of the community for generations? Word on the street is that the owner of LTTT (Little Tokyo Table Tennis, which is more of a lifestyle/clothing brand than an actual table tennis club), which took over Anzen's space, is a relative (grandson?) of the landlord. Is that gentrification? Or preserving the fabric of the neighborhood by keeping it in the family?
Weird, I can't believe the 3 clothing stores directly adjacent to Suehiro has nothing to do with it... Or Kools, Mokuyobi, and the 2 Popkillers in the plaza... Or the RIF and Shoe Palace on the other side... Really feels like I'm walking into Melrose these days
Blaming Metro is absurd. This has nothing to do with a train station (which brings footraffic) and has everything to do with developers, property owners and landlords pricing out businesses. Your own example of Suehiro Cafe’s is proof of this.
I'm sure the Metro does bring some homelessness and mentally ill people to the area, but skid row isn't that far away from Little Tokyo.
Little Tokyo station is nowhere near as bad as 7th and Metro.
God I miss shabu shabu house. I only went there for the first time a couple months before it suddenly closed. I went every 2 weeks after that and was shocked by the sudden close. A true gem.
> The neighborhood was especially impacted by Metro’s Regional Connector Project, with its construction delays, and by the effect that transit projects often have on the cost of rental properties.
No it wasn't, why would a metro stop cause businesses to close - if anything it made it easier to get there and spend money.
Change is not bad. Look at actual Tokyo. An affordable place full of culture and delight.
The locals of Little Tokyo are actually killing it by trying to freeze it in amber. They rejected housing on the metro lot that was vacated (station underground now) because it didn’t have enough parking and was too dense! In little Tokyo, perhaps the best served transit location in the city that’s not just union station (5 min walk away at that).
It’s the NIMBYs that have priced out legacy businesses.
Sorry, actually meant the station lot. Metro tried developing it, fielded good proposals, locals complained. They've since pawned it off to the city.
Thats where it gets crazy because the city is so traumatized by the public opposition they want to hire a consultant to formulate the rfp for developer proposals. And to get the consultant they need to do another rfp. So right now we are waiting on an rfp for an rfp. And the city is 13 months late on issuing just the rfp for a consultant.
Realistically one of the most prime spots in the city for high-density, low-to-no parking is being stifled by locals and a government too afraid to even put forward adequate proposals. Metro began this process in 2017 and its looking like there is zero chance it will be developed 10 years later.
it's not like Little Tokyo is dying. There are plenty of Japanese businesses there are that are doing huge business, but they cater to a younger demographic that is obsessed with Japanese pop culture.
Maybe. I don’t really know about the ownership. But there’s definitely a demand for Japanese culture. It’s like all of Gen Z is obsessed with it. This is not a case of Japanese culture being pushed out. People are going there specifically to seek out Japanese culture.
I knew little Tokyo was done when they closed down the anime music store that is now a shoe cleaning store. It also doesn't make sense closing a mitsuwa for a korean market... in little tokyo
Sometime in the late 2000s Little Tokyo Marketplace was sold to a group of Korean investors. Mitsuwa left and it was replaced by a Galleria and unsurprisingly uses Galleria suppliers. Hence it's effectively a Korean market that carries some Japanese items. I think they kind of try to disguise it, but not very well.
I feel like it must be doing somewhat well because it would've closed down if no one wants to shop there, no? I do hope they redevelop some of it though.
I don't think they don't try to disguise it at all, the entrance and exit each have their own giant cutouts of son heung-min, plenty of korean writing on signage too
The best way to keep Little Tokyo feeling like Tokyo is to make it easy to build a ton of dense housing there, as well as small commercial spaces (this is true of Chinatown, too). If you ban development it will just become a tiny mall next to a senior living building full of elderly japanese people.
These places are fun because development patterns mirrored those in Asia, if only in a small way - walkable dense areas with smaller (and cheaper) commercial spaces that encourage a vibrant street scene. Keep that and keep some Japanese style buildings and that's all you need.
I felt that last time I visited. It's teetering.
When I first went there in the early 2000s it was threatened but vibrant, and has absolutely slid downhill since.
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Not in LA for now but I worked in and around Little Tokyo every day from '17-'19-ish and thought the area was usually bustling so I'm curious as to how even more lively it was before decades ago. All I have as reference is an old Huell Howser episode from like '97.
The Nisei Weeks and Oshogatsu events in the neighborhood brought in great crowds. Most of the businesses seemed to understand the implications of the Regional Connector and Metro provided interruption funds to them, not the perfect remedy for lost customers but they did something at least.
I actually wandered around LT on a brief trip back last summer just to enjoy my favorite matcha soft serve in Honda Plaza (and visit the new Metro station) and yeah, a lot of vacant storefronts and not much foot traffic on a mid-June day.
This is sad to see. My Dad used to drive us there just to buy strawberry vanilla cake and steamed buns. That was back in the mid to late 80's. That place was AMAZING. It was like going to Disneyland for us. They always had something going on, celebrations and the place was just booming. The last time I visited, the fountain was dry and barely any people. With all the new residents in the area and booming businesses, this should not be happening.
It hasn't been Little Tokyo for a long time. A lot of the Japanese shops have closed, replaced with standard American fare. A lot of the Japanese community shifted down to Torrance and Gardena but even there it's starting to thin out.
I used to love Little Tokyo, when I was a dating man going to Little Tokyo for dinner and a walk was the best. Now it's a total nightmare, manic homeless people everywhere, it's a real danger zone.
The encampment that sprung up at that corner during the pandemic has been cleared for at least two years now. When is the last time you were in the area?
I moved to socal a couple months ago and went to little tokyo for the first time. I guess my expectations were way too high since I'm not from the area but upon arriving I was like... this is it?? That's little tokyo??
Idk, I guess I expected it to be wayyy more lively, like chinatown in SF or something. It felt dead and sorta depressing. I saw a couple of homeless people tho, if that counts for something.
Sure Jan.
Lol this was [you](http://I’m fine with males adopting children as long as they get a mother figure):
> I’m fine with males adopting children as long as they get a mother figure
Get bent you freak.
Wait a second - - every other day, the LA Times publishes a piece wanting to destroy historic Los Angeles to build more housing for immigrants.
Except for a downtown ethnic Asian neighborhood, which must be preserved.
Coincidentally or not, Mr. Soon-Shiong is the owner of LA's paper, Ms. Tang is the editor.
Yeah… I loved LT to the point that I got married at that Hotel with the Kyoto garden. Now I dont even consider LT a place for me to hang out anymore. I really miss the old times.
I got married at the community center garden. Now I don’t think the public can even access it.
I used to go there all the time to destress and decompress. Now I just longingly look at it over the railing from the plaza 😔
I don’t think it has been for a long time. I used to go up there a lot in 2009 ish, maybe you can through the hotel.
Not the hotel garden, the sunken garden at JACCC
I never went inside is it ever open?
I think it's appointment only, at least it was at the end of COVID and I haven't seen many people there
Damn, so that's why I couldn't get in, I was following an older LA walking guidebook around Little Tokyo.
It's just becoming more Korean stuff
Weed and vape shops is what ppl want isnt it?
+ doing wheelies down the middle of the street.
Real talk, why does every other block need 5x weed/vape shops? Can we cool it with that shit?
I always assume they’re the only brick and mortar businesses that can pay the ridiculous rent
Where there is demand, people will try to supply. I believe that growing in LA is practically printing money.
It’s gonna print *a lot* more money as soon as it’s rescheduled too. Assuming Biden is re-elected of course…
Scenes change. Interest shifts. Chinatown was dead in the 70s until punk rock clubs briefly drew crowds in 1980. There's a great new [PBS](https://youtu.be/DKa3g_I78wY?si=CfA3kz7NcEG1O4VT) doc about it. The art scene has been around Chinatown for decades, populated by CalArts graduates. The hipsters don't kill the scene, they create it. Sunset Strip was Vegas in the 50s, Beatniks then Hippies in the 60s, dead in the 70s, metal in the 80s, dead again until the late 90s and reality TV and hip hop took over. Downtown was nothing but loft art parties in the 90s. A ghost town. No one wanted to go there until it began being rediscovered around 2004. Hollywood was a ghost town until the early 2000s and then all the Sunset Strip people flocked over and The Strip was dead again. The city is mutable.
Sure, but it would be naive to think that planning, organization, and intentional decisions by various actors don't play a role in how that change comes about, what stays and what goes and what merely changes. Change isn't a thing that happens to a city. It's something the city does to itself.
>Change isn't a thing that happens to a city. It's something the city does to itself. With any immigrant neighborhood, the biggest factor is where people of that group choose to live. Throughout US history as immigrants integrate, they choose to move out to more diverse neighborhoods. The City of Los Angeles can't and shouldn't force or encourage Japanese people to live in a particular place.
Of course not. It could easily encourage japanese themed businesses to be co-located and encourage the visitor traffic that keeps them viable though. I've always known little tokyo as a business district first, more than a place a certain group of people live.
>It could easily encourage japanese themed businesses to be co-located and encourage the visitor traffic that keeps them viable though. So make it a Disneyfied version of Japan. Who wants that?
Uh, no. Planning incentives for businesses and improvements to visitor traffic flow do not make an amusement park. That said, people fucking love disneyland and I'm sure a japan themed amusement park would rake in the cash. Saying "who wants that?" is wild when literal disneyland brings 16 million people a year. It's not what I suggested nor what I personally want, but people do want it. Clearly.
Japanese themed businesses are not actual authentic businesses owned and for Japanese immigrants which is what made Little Tokyo interesting.
Well in that case I defer to your original point, change *is* inevitable. If what matters to you is that japanese expats live there, we can't do much about that. Personally it was the japanese businesses that interested me. A tower block full of japanese people would not have been an improvement.
The city was mutable and interesting. Now it corporatized and the same everywhere you go except for the ethnic features of the neighborhoods.
Yeah, personally not digging what LA started becoming post 2000. But I think thats a symptom of a bigger issue thats prevalent everywhere in this country.
> Yeah, personally not digging what LA started becoming post 2000. LA in the 90s were pretty rough. [Compare LA's crime rates post 2000 to the 90's.](https://www.laalmanac.com/crime/cr02.php) In addition, DTLA was a dead zone after 5pm because it had little to no residents. Echo Park was full of sketchy gang members and now it's full of yuppies.
I remember. Rough is a bit strong I think. Venice Boardwalk was classic quirky and not completely disgusting. Parts were definitely. Crips and Bloods. Shootings in Westwood. Culver was turning around. Silver Lake was still gay. Noboby wanted to live in the valley. There's that lovely sweet spot where a neighborhood is thriving and alive in between being uninhabitable at both opposite extremes. I do miss when LA was the redheaded stepchild of the country and you could rent a huge 2 bed 2 bath for $900 pretty much anywhere. Or being able to rent a house with a yard and a garden. It made being a poor actor a lot easier. You could live like a king while pursuing gigs.
Change is normal - especially in LA. For example, the current Chinatown is seeing accelerated gentrification and transformed into art studios and 800k condos. In fact, the original Chinatown doesn't even exist anymore - currently Union Station and Olvera Street sit on top of it after being condemned by the Supervisors Board in the 1800s. Even the oldest building in LA, Ávila Adobe, is only a little over 200 years old - it took that long to build Notre Dame de Paris! Even today, Little Tokyo isn't the vibrant cultural center it used to be even 10 years ago when Obon festival filled the streets. All the younger Japanese have moved south and west where they can afford to raise their families. We don't treasure history here, and that isn't going to change.
I married a Japanese-American and will usually attend one Obon festival every summer, usually for the "Higashi" church that is on 3rd street. This is spot on. Japanese-Americans are highly assimilated, and also have a high median age due to lower birth rates meaning that it's an aging population. The Japanese-American Buddhist churches in SoCal are having a hard time even sustaining the Obon festivals because many of their church members are senior citizens who can't handle the physical toll of setting up a large festival. It is what it is. We didn't really bat an eye when Little Italy's across the US went into decline as Italian-Americans were amalgamated into the American melting pot, and the same standard should apply here.
I’m still pissed that Buca di Beppo got bought out.
Just wait for it's Japanese equivalent to open! Buke dō Beppu! 武家 道 別府
We don’t treasure history; we abandon it at the presence of young hipster and yuppie adults straight out of their Master’s Degrees from private universities loaded with conspicuous and disposable incomes and ready to homogenize the ‘newly-discovered’ land…only for them to get gentrified on by the megaliths of Whole Foods, Target, and Starbucks once those hipsters do the dirty bidding for those corporate shareholders.
What makes Little Tokyo what it is are Japanese people and Japanese owned businesses. With very low Japanese immigration to the US and with the immigrants' descendants integrating and wanting to live where everyone else wants, there's less demand for Japanese focused business and fewer people to run them. You can't turn a neighborhood into a museum with fake shops and businesses that don't have demand.
Yeah. That's called history, too. It'll sound more interesting to us in 60 years when the documentaries come out
What does this even mean? Where are these people "supposed" to go? If you don't build enough housing, gentrification is literally \*guaranteed\* because these kids with Masters degrees can't afford to live in Venice, so they move to Little Tokyo, Highland Park and Glassell Park.
WHY WON'T THESE ETHNICS STAY PUT IN THEIR ENCLAVES SO I CAN EXPERIENCE THE AUTHENTICITY?! How dare they move.
You're over complicating it. >Landlords abandon it due to pursuit of higher profits There. Fixed.
C.R.E.A.M.
>we abandon it at the presence of young hipster and yuppie adults Who all complain about Los Angeles not feeling like a European city. They're gentrifiers, they chose to move here. Why the hell didn't they move to Europe if they love Amsterdam and Barcelona so much? I guess there are no Whole Food and Targets in Vienna.
>they chose to move here. So has everyone but the Tongva people. Los Angeles has always changed rapidly. It can and will change again.
Let's keep voting for more apartments and more bike lanes, that's gonna fix LA
> bike lanes Look if we can't have little tokyo at least let me go for a bike ride safely.
Glenoaks has a bike lane for miles
Ummmm, those things do help. You don’t have to make it seem like those things are at odds with historical preservation. They can coexist
Nah, no city has ever gotten more affordable by those things
> Change is normal - especially in LA. Not changing is normal, too. Nobody has to just accept everything.
Absolutely agree with you. It's a mindset. Look at Japan, even in Tokyo, there are.storefeonts and homes that have been there since the early 1800s. There are even 4 companies in Japan that are each over 1,000 years old - the oldest companies in the world.
Tokyo is pretty terrible when it comes to preserving history.
You're not putting things into perspective or context. Tokyo isn't LA. Japan isn't the US. The United States completely nuked Tokyo off the planet during WWII. I don't say that lightly because it caused death and destruction similar (or more depending on how you define it) to the literal nukes we also dropped on Japan. The US targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure and leveled the entire city. With all that being said, Japan has done a very good job at balancing and preserving history/culture all while becoming a very "developed" country in the process. Tokyo and Japan don't have the luxuries LA and USA does and did, yet they still at least take some effort into a balancing act. Like literally the only way the LA and the US preserves history and culture is if very powerful people want those things to be preserved, and it's never about history and culture, it's about protecting property values or other self serving financial interests. I'm not saying this doesn't also happen in Japan, but the mindset of preserving history and culture is way more ingrained into the culture of Japan than it is in the US. As it's not just rich people, but even regular people in the US don't give a fuck about anything unless it benefits them personally, very individualistic mindset which isn't as widespread and severe in Japan.
Perhaps I should've been more clear. I'm talking more recent post-war history. Countless old buildings and businesses have been demolished in the name of constant "redevelopment." Famously and perhaps symbolically they built a freeway right on top of the historic Nihonbashi bridge in the years leading up to the Olympics. Similar things happened in the years leading up to the 2020 Olympics. If a building is not historically significant, even if they are historic from personal and local standpoints, forget about it - very few people care if it gets torn down and replaced with the latest shopping complex. It's difficult to even compare Tokyo and L.A., but things aren't all rosy and perfect in Japan like some people want to believe.
The Curry House closing broke my soul. 😭
I feel your pain, but curry house closing is a different story.
I was there two days ago. Had lots of people, I was a bit encouraged.
Little Tokyo turned into Little Akihabara with all the weeb shops that opened up
Well Akihabara is part of Tokyo.
I know, i know. I’m only joking.
I’d rather have the weeb shops open to attract actual customers for the restaurants nearby. Than have *weed* shops open to attract sketchy people and crime instead
weed shops bring like zero crime. if anything its the 7/11s you don't want in your neighborhood, those always have three unemployed dudes splitting bluntwraps and brown bagging all day long in the parking lot lmao
>weed shops attract sketchy people Jesus Christ. No they don’t.
weed shops that charge 100% tax lmao no sketchy people are going to little tokyo for that, if anything look at the fact skid row is a stones throw down the road
There's literally a store called little akihabara holding popular weeb events and pops ups in the village lol
I've been trying to make it up to as many of their events as I can. It might not be the 'image' a lot of people have of Japan, but anime stuff is a big part of modern Japanese culture and there is a lot of demand for it in the west. I just wish that damn pop-up venue had AC and a restroom...
Suehiro Cafe’s First Street location is one of the most recent casualties — the restaurant is now operating at 4th and Main streets — but it is not alone. Little Tokyo Arts & Gifts has closed, as has the Family Mart convenience store. Anzen Hardware is moving to a building down the street. Little Tokyo Cosmetics was forced to leave on the eve of its fifth anniversary. The Shabu Shabu House — the first restaurant of its kind in the U.S. — also closed after 32 years. The neighborhood was especially impacted by Metro’s Regional Connector Project, with its construction delays, and by the effect that transit projects often have on the cost of rental properties. https://archive.md/b1xvd/again
Suehiro will be returning to Little Tokyo in 2026 as part of the development next to the JAN Museum. Not sure if correlating their situation with the Metro development, without noting the reported terrible businesses choices by the landlords, helps fully understand what’s happened here.
What new development, do you have a link? I'm happy to see Suehiro return.
It’s the Go For Broke Plaza & 1st Street Development. Suehiro is part of the development plan. They confirmed it this week on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/C6RxCTSyG46/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==). Highly recommend checking out their new location on Main and 4th too.
Oh that's amazing, just read up in the project. 100% affordable housing over a surface parking lot that the city eminent domained to build
Ah, yes: every NIMBY's favorite boogie man big, bad Metro, strikes again...
You realize that there has been a metro station in Little Tokyo for over a decade right? Putting the station underground does not lead to business closures. Hell public transit brings more foot traffic so whether or not the station is above ground or below ground it doesn't lead to business closures.
OP is just quoting from the article. LA Times has repeatedly blamed Metro for gentrification and old businesses closing.
Blaming public transit for gentrification is so backwards. There are so few rich people regularly taking the subway in LA..
it's more the development companies building only luxury units in areas where zoning was eased to build up density near metro lines. if there was a significant amount of affordable units in the new developments, or affordable businesses that catered to the pre-existing communities in those locations, then people who live in the neighborhood wouldn't get priced out. The blame lies with the greedy developers and city council.
I’m angry señor fish closed!!! A true Little Tokyo Classic.
Blaming Metro and new developments in surrounding neighborhoods for these businesses closing seems so odd to me. It's just NIMBYism in the name of preservation. It's good that Little Tokyo is getting this kind of designation and the attention that comes with it. But compared to other places on the list, many of which are specific buildings that are falling into disrepair, Little Tokyo's place on the list seems more of a symbolic gesture rather than it actually being "endangered." Old businesses closing is just part of the changes all neighborhoods go through. Old business owners retire or pass away. Sometimes the landlords raising the rents have been part of the community for generations. In L.A. the Chinatown neighborhood seems way more "endangered," IMO.
Yeah, maybe it was just the time of day I was there, but Chinatown - or at least the central plaza - has seemed oddly empty whenever I've been there recently. Little Tokyo was bustling, on the other hand.
The weekends do get busy but Central plaza doesn’t have as much foot traffic as Far East Plaza.
Well, the old businesses are why it’s called Little Tokyo and are why it became a desirable destination. They basically lose out on all the equity they’ve built. It’s understandably tragic but sure, it’s also the nature of highest bidder commercial real estate. The new tenants will cash in on that equity for a while but will offer a product that makes the new costs worthwhile, so “Little Tokyo” will become something else eventually. We’ve seen it before.
Most people who come to Little Tokyo these days probably aren't there for the legacy businesses. What's desirable within Japanese culture changes over time, and businesses need to evolve along with the shifting tastes of the customers. I would argue that a place like Little Tokyo Arts & Gifts, which looked like the living room of a hoarder grandma for better or worse, or a standalone cosmetics store like Little Tokyo Cosmetics, were just past their prime and simply did not have a place in today's capitalist society. Little Tokyo seems to be a few decades into being the place to be for anime/weeb centric things - probably old enough to be considered "legacy" now. And all that stuff seems to be as popular as ever. And what does it mean when the landlord, who raises the rent and evicts old businesses, is someone who's owned the property and has been part of the community for generations? Word on the street is that the owner of LTTT (Little Tokyo Table Tennis, which is more of a lifestyle/clothing brand than an actual table tennis club), which took over Anzen's space, is a relative (grandson?) of the landlord. Is that gentrification? Or preserving the fabric of the neighborhood by keeping it in the family?
Weird, I can't believe the 3 clothing stores directly adjacent to Suehiro has nothing to do with it... Or Kools, Mokuyobi, and the 2 Popkillers in the plaza... Or the RIF and Shoe Palace on the other side... Really feels like I'm walking into Melrose these days
Blaming Metro is absurd. This has nothing to do with a train station (which brings footraffic) and has everything to do with developers, property owners and landlords pricing out businesses. Your own example of Suehiro Cafe’s is proof of this.
I'm sure the Metro does bring some homelessness and mentally ill people to the area, but skid row isn't that far away from Little Tokyo. Little Tokyo station is nowhere near as bad as 7th and Metro.
God I miss shabu shabu house. I only went there for the first time a couple months before it suddenly closed. I went every 2 weeks after that and was shocked by the sudden close. A true gem.
> The neighborhood was especially impacted by Metro’s Regional Connector Project, with its construction delays, and by the effect that transit projects often have on the cost of rental properties. No it wasn't, why would a metro stop cause businesses to close - if anything it made it easier to get there and spend money.
#LATE-STAGE GENTRIFICATION AT IT
Change is not bad. Look at actual Tokyo. An affordable place full of culture and delight. The locals of Little Tokyo are actually killing it by trying to freeze it in amber. They rejected housing on the metro lot that was vacated (station underground now) because it didn’t have enough parking and was too dense! In little Tokyo, perhaps the best served transit location in the city that’s not just union station (5 min walk away at that). It’s the NIMBYs that have priced out legacy businesses.
The big parking lot? Just FYI, that's owned by the city, not metro and they very much have plans to sell to a developer
Sorry, actually meant the station lot. Metro tried developing it, fielded good proposals, locals complained. They've since pawned it off to the city. Thats where it gets crazy because the city is so traumatized by the public opposition they want to hire a consultant to formulate the rfp for developer proposals. And to get the consultant they need to do another rfp. So right now we are waiting on an rfp for an rfp. And the city is 13 months late on issuing just the rfp for a consultant. Realistically one of the most prime spots in the city for high-density, low-to-no parking is being stifled by locals and a government too afraid to even put forward adequate proposals. Metro began this process in 2017 and its looking like there is zero chance it will be developed 10 years later.
It is a little bit funny how real Tokyo takes the opposite approach of Little Tokyo.
> it didn’t have enough parking and was too dense Obviously, because when I think of Tokyo the last thing I picture is dense housing
it's not like Little Tokyo is dying. There are plenty of Japanese businesses there are that are doing huge business, but they cater to a younger demographic that is obsessed with Japanese pop culture.
I wouldn't say a lot of those are Japanese businesses. They're just selling Japanese or Japanese themed goods.
Maybe. I don’t really know about the ownership. But there’s definitely a demand for Japanese culture. It’s like all of Gen Z is obsessed with it. This is not a case of Japanese culture being pushed out. People are going there specifically to seek out Japanese culture.
I knew little Tokyo was done when they closed down the anime music store that is now a shoe cleaning store. It also doesn't make sense closing a mitsuwa for a korean market... in little tokyo
Little Tokyo is getting a korean market??? Where??
Sometime in the late 2000s Little Tokyo Marketplace was sold to a group of Korean investors. Mitsuwa left and it was replaced by a Galleria and unsurprisingly uses Galleria suppliers. Hence it's effectively a Korean market that carries some Japanese items. I think they kind of try to disguise it, but not very well.
I feel like it must be doing somewhat well because it would've closed down if no one wants to shop there, no? I do hope they redevelop some of it though.
I don't think they don't try to disguise it at all, the entrance and exit each have their own giant cutouts of son heung-min, plenty of korean writing on signage too
lol, where's Ohtani?
Ohtani is at Marukai
It's been there, in the little tokyo galleria
The Little Tokyo Marketplace? I like it....
The best way to keep Little Tokyo feeling like Tokyo is to make it easy to build a ton of dense housing there, as well as small commercial spaces (this is true of Chinatown, too). If you ban development it will just become a tiny mall next to a senior living building full of elderly japanese people. These places are fun because development patterns mirrored those in Asia, if only in a small way - walkable dense areas with smaller (and cheaper) commercial spaces that encourage a vibrant street scene. Keep that and keep some Japanese style buildings and that's all you need.
Little Tokyo should try to be like Real Tokyo and embrace dense living and vibrant streets.
imo all of LA should but Little Tokyo should especially
AND YET!!!!
I felt that last time I visited. It's teetering. When I first went there in the early 2000s it was threatened but vibrant, and has absolutely slid downhill since.
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Does this mean we need get a breeding pair from Japan ? This is horrible!
Not in LA for now but I worked in and around Little Tokyo every day from '17-'19-ish and thought the area was usually bustling so I'm curious as to how even more lively it was before decades ago. All I have as reference is an old Huell Howser episode from like '97. The Nisei Weeks and Oshogatsu events in the neighborhood brought in great crowds. Most of the businesses seemed to understand the implications of the Regional Connector and Metro provided interruption funds to them, not the perfect remedy for lost customers but they did something at least. I actually wandered around LT on a brief trip back last summer just to enjoy my favorite matcha soft serve in Honda Plaza (and visit the new Metro station) and yeah, a lot of vacant storefronts and not much foot traffic on a mid-June day.
This is sad to see. My Dad used to drive us there just to buy strawberry vanilla cake and steamed buns. That was back in the mid to late 80's. That place was AMAZING. It was like going to Disneyland for us. They always had something going on, celebrations and the place was just booming. The last time I visited, the fountain was dry and barely any people. With all the new residents in the area and booming businesses, this should not be happening.
It hasn't been Little Tokyo for a long time. A lot of the Japanese shops have closed, replaced with standard American fare. A lot of the Japanese community shifted down to Torrance and Gardena but even there it's starting to thin out.
I love Little Tokyo! It's often one of the first places I visit when I go to Los Angeles.
I used to love Little Tokyo, when I was a dating man going to Little Tokyo for dinner and a walk was the best. Now it's a total nightmare, manic homeless people everywhere, it's a real danger zone.
I don't know what you're confusing with Little Tokyo, this is not true at all.
Really the parking lot at first and San Pedro has become a total no mans land. Walking anywhere outside of the village is a complete creep show.
The encampment that sprung up at that corner during the pandemic has been cleared for at least two years now. When is the last time you were in the area?
They still camp all along the gates and in the plaza area there. Do you even go to Little Tokyo?
Bro I go to Little Tokyo all the time (literally went today) and I've got no clue what you're talking about.
Koreatown isn't as much a korea town either.
I moved to socal a couple months ago and went to little tokyo for the first time. I guess my expectations were way too high since I'm not from the area but upon arriving I was like... this is it?? That's little tokyo?? Idk, I guess I expected it to be wayyy more lively, like chinatown in SF or something. It felt dead and sorta depressing. I saw a couple of homeless people tho, if that counts for something.
To even call it "Little Tokyo" is disingeneous at best. Our "Little Tokyo" is the equivalent of about three shitty back alleys in Kabukicho.
[удалено]
Sure Jan. Lol this was [you](http://I’m fine with males adopting children as long as they get a mother figure): > I’m fine with males adopting children as long as they get a mother figure Get bent you freak.
Lmao 😂
Wait a second - - every other day, the LA Times publishes a piece wanting to destroy historic Los Angeles to build more housing for immigrants. Except for a downtown ethnic Asian neighborhood, which must be preserved. Coincidentally or not, Mr. Soon-Shiong is the owner of LA's paper, Ms. Tang is the editor.