Update: This post describes interesting Asian shopping in the East Bay near San Francisco. We have since moved to Georgia. Now when an urge for Asian shopping and food strikes, I head to the Atlanta area -- Assi Plaza, Great Wall, Super H Mart, or Tomato. Now to the original post...
I visited Japan in 1995. I quickly discovered something on that journey. The glee I felt when I discovered Hello Kitty as a child? Just the tip of the iceburg. The Japanese design, create, and sell really cool stuff.
San Francisco has Japantown, which makes my heart go pitter pat. Thankfully, there are also Japanese stores on this side of the bay. My favorite is a little hole in the wall in El Cerrito called Ichiban Kan...
It seems like the Japanese as a people love the same things I do -- stationery and office supplies, long baths, teatime, nature, and cooking, for example. They embrace these things with style and innovation. And then there's also the "cute factor," as Hello Kitty can attest.
Thanks to Ichiban Kan, I now have a butter knife with a happy face on it. Who doesn't need one of those when guests come to share biscuits?! My desk is now delightfully organized. I discovered the best kitchen bowl scrapers ever. Eli has a bin for his socks in a lovely and unusual shade of green. And at the end of a stressful day I can sink into a lovely bath, adding scented salts with a little bamboo scoop. If I'm in the mood to wander through a store, Ichiban Kan almost always turns up something I didn't even know existed but desperately need. Ahem. Okay. Desperately want.
Below is probably my favorite section of Ichiban Kan. Japanese bento lunchboxes are a wonder. (Click HERE to see what the bento lunchbox is all about.) There are whole blogs about jazzing up American kiddo lunchboxes in the bento style -- Wendolonia, for example. I'm sure it is competitive parenting and an over-the-top annoyance to some. But it looks like a lot of fun to me.
My friend Sarah told me about decorative picks for bento lunches. Kids can spear foods, which is apparently ten times more fun than a fork. We got some reusable ones for about $2.00 per pack of ten -- and it is some of the best money I've spent lately. I think Eli would eat a stewed slug if he could just have it served up on a giraffe-shaped pick. There's a lot more veggie-eating in our house lately. Woo hoo!
Ichiban Kan has three locations -- El Cerrito, San Francisco, and San Bruno. Click HERE for their website.
The East Bay also offers Daiso, a Japanese general store where most items are $1.50. It is located in downtown Berkeley on Telegraph Avenue. The store is bigger than Ichiban Kan but doesn't have some of the larger, more expensive Japanese products.
Finally, for spiffy Asian products with a Korean flare, Oakland's Koreana Plaza is a lot of fun. There is a grocery store that is great fun to explore but also a building with housewares.
(Many thanks to my buddy Hadley for her information about Asian shops!)
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