Japantown (also known as "Nihonmachi" (ja: 日本町), "Little Osaka," and "J Town") comprises about six square city blocks in the Lower Pacific Heights section of San Francisco. The area is home to a large number of Japanese (and some Korean and Chinese) restaurants, supermarkets, indoor shopping malls, hotels, banks and other shops, including one of the few U.S. branches of the large Kinokuniya bookstore chain. The main thoroughfare is Post Street. I...
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Japantown (also known as "Nihonmachi" (ja: 日本町), "Little Osaka," and "J Town") comprises about six square city blocks in the Lower Pacific Heights section of San Francisco. The area is home to a large number of Japanese (and some Korean and Chinese) restaurants, supermarkets, indoor shopping malls, hotels, banks and other shops, including one of the few U.S. branches of the large Kinokuniya bookstore chain. The main thoroughfare is Post Street. Its focal point is the Japan Center (opened in 1968), the site of three Japanese-oriented shopping centers and the Peace Pagoda, a five-tiered concrete stupa designed by Japanese architect Yoshiro Taniguchi and presented to San Francisco by the people of Osaka, Japan.
San Francisco's Japantown is the largest and oldest such enclave in the United States. However, it is only a shadow of what it once was before World War II. Presently there are only two other Japantowns in the United States.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S....
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