San Francisco - Alison Bing [63]
All of this would be hard to imagine from looking at today’s ‘Little Osaka,’ where stores are cheerfully crammed with panda-shaped staplers and iron teapots, and sushi and karaoke bars greet diners with ‘Konichiwa!’ Yoshi’s Click here) has brought jazz back south of Geary, and there’s even the Japanese anime-themed Hotel Tomo. The most obvious dramas here unfold in ikebana window displays, Sundance Kabuki Cinema and taiko drumming demonstrations during the Cherry Blossom Festival. Yet the community is as active as ever, holding protests against treatment of US prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and co-hosting Ramadan celebrations with the city’s Arab American and South Asian Muslim population. No wonder the octogenarians at Kabuki Springs & Spa seem so sprightly.
Uphill from Japantown, Pacific Heights seems to lead a charmed existence, with Victorians miraculously spared from the 1906 earthquake and fire, panoramic hilltop parks, high-end restaurants and designer boutiques. Alta Plaza and Lafayette Parks offer stunning views along Pacific Heights’ northern ridge, surrounded by outrageous Victorians, whose original vibrant paint jobs have been painted over with more saleable shades of white, gray and beige. Coincidentally enough, these colors are also a fair reflection of the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood, which in multiculti SF is often derisively referred to as ‘Specific Whites.’ But behind those stately doors, weekly séances and ambient-music concerts are held, and pug parades are held in Alta Plaza Park the first Sunday of the month from 1pm to 4pm. Never underestimate SF’s colorful eccentricity.
Japantown is west of Franklin St, east of Divisadero St, and below California to Geary Sts, where it merges with the historically African American Fillmore district. Some gorgeous Victorian homes survive around Japantown; spot a few along Pine and Bush Sts. Japantown is south of Pacific Heights, which in turn is south of the Marina and the bay. Wide Geary St runs from Downtown art galleries past Japan Center with its Peace Pagoda. Boutique-packed Fillmore St runs north–south through Japantown and Pacific Heights, while California St runs from the Financial District through Nob Hill to the heart of Pacific Heights, and onward to the Richmond.
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top picks
JAPANTOWN & PACIFIC HEIGHTS
Kabuki Springs & Spa
Yoshi’s
Sundance Kabuki Cinema
Japan Center
Benkyodo
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JAPAN CENTER Map
www.sfjapantown.org; 1625 Post St; 10am- midnight; 2, 3, 4, 22, 38
Entering this oddly charming mall is like walking onto a 1960s Japanese movie set – the fake-rock waterfall, indoor wooden pedestrian bridges, rock gardens and curtained wooden restaurant entryways have hardly aged a day since the mall’s grand opening in 1968. If not for the anachronistic Tare Panda cell-phone charms and Harajuku fashion mags displayed at Kinokuniya Books & Stationery, Japan Center would be a total time warp.
PEACE PAGODA Map
Peace Plaza, Japan Center; 2, 3, 4, 22, 38
When San Francisco’s sister city of Osaka, Japan, made a gift of Yoshiro Taniguchi’s five-tiered concrete stupa to the people of San Francisco in 1968, the city seemed stupa-fied what to do with the minimalist monument, and kept clustering boxed shrubs around its stark nakedness. But with some well-placed cherry trees and low, hewn-rock benches in the plaza, the pagoda is finally in its element au naturel.
RUTH ASAWA FOUNTAINS Map
Buchanan Pedestrian St; 2, 3, 4, 22, 38
Sit inside the fountain, splash around and stay awhile: celebrated sculptor and former WWII internee Ruth Asawa designed these fountains to be lived in, not observed from a polite distance. Bronze origami dandelions sprout from polished-pebble pools, with benches built right in for bento-box picnics. On rare warm days along this wind-tunnel pedestrian block, kids frolic and weary shoppers enjoy footbaths under the dandelions.
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TRANSPORTATION: JAPANTOWN & PACIFIC HEIGHTS
Bus The 38 follows Geary St from Downtown to Japantown. Bus