Roaming my old Neighborhood
Incredible mural by FCO1980 on the corner of 4th and Jackson; the details on this are incredible
Even though I'm back home in New England I'm still sorting through a lot of the photos I took while I was visiting my parents for last week's hard times™ - now stop me if you've heard this one before (in any of the last few days blogs) but I haven't been to my hometown of San José since I moved away in 2017; any festival or date my band played in the bay after that was usually in San Francisco, and detouring to the south bay didn't make sense; an exception being MAGWest 2017 but we pretty much stayed at the hotel in Santa Clara the whole time.
For a significant chunk of my time living in San José, I lived in Japantown; the several block district between Empire and Taylor streets east/west and 1st - 9th street north/south. There are only 3 of these left in the country, all of which are in California (SJ, LA, SF), and this one does not shy away from its history.
One of the many commemorative monuments around town
I learned about executive order 9066 at a probably early age than most, not because my family is Japanese but because my dad's best friend is; he was born months after his mom was released from internment at Heart Mountain, their family had returned to San José with the rest of the Bay Area Internees and did their best to rebuild what they could here in J-town. And it worked, because by the time I was born 40ish years later, a vibrant Japanese American community had pulled through.
I'm dealing with a lot right now with my dad's health situation which is complicated for a MYRIAD of reasons but a thing I keep coming back to is that despite my parents raising me and my siblings in a fundamentalist evangelical megachurch, despite being born half chicano and raised in a racist environment that taught us that we needed to be as 'white' as possible...every year of my childhood we went to help out my dad's friend at the Obon festival. My parents are fundamentally opposed to all non-Christian religions and cultures (and have actively voted that way since the McCarthy era) and yet, I grew up with Taiko performances, Buddhist services and this building in the background of effectively every summer.
I don't know what I was supposed to take from that as a kid, because it sure as shit wasn't the "learn about other cultures, it'll do you good" that I did - it was probably more "hide your politics to help your friends even if you 'know' they're less than you" but even that feels not quite it. They're in their 80's and I'm not likely to ever get closure on this.
Another fixture of Japantown was the abandoned gas station on the corner of 5th and Jackson; bought by a man named Roy Murotsune in the 50's with the settlement from being imprisoned by his own country for simply being the 'wrong' ethnicity, he ran it until the 80's when it eventually closed but the land stayed in the family. In the early 2010s, his daughter Carole Rast and his grandkids converted the station into a fully solar powered, sustainably run coffee shop called Roy's Station.
They even cleaned up the old gas pump and coke machine to keep the vibes.
Carole and her family's work have turned this into sort of the undisputed "center" of Japantown at this point. Every morning you can see her watering plants along the street, her husband Frank sweeping up trash FAR beyond the boundaries of the shop itself. Since every major festival takes place on Jackson, Roy's at the core. I worked there for a few years before my descent into tech industry hell (miss it tbh) and after a long time with corporate coffee (Starbucks) it was probably one of the best jobs I ever had with one of the best bosses. The vibes were immaculate.
The window I had to explore Jtown was a bit limited and not a lot of things were open for the day but it was good to see, for example, one of the best ramen places in the south bay still kicking.
Try the Crab Curry Ramen if you ever have a chance
The shave ice counter was closed but Nijiya supermarket wasn't! Which meant I could grab some UCC for later photo editing and stock up on Hichew for the remainder of my trip.
(I know realistically I can buy both of these things online but there's something satisfying about walking past the gashapon machines and the smells of the produce and waiting in line. Plus, it's always nice to go into establishments that still have their staff masking.)
Anyway, that's my nostalgia trip down Jackson street. Only regret other than lack of time is that I didn't have enough of a budget to pick up some shit at Zonkey, where the mural at the top of this blog post is from. They had Ghidorah prayer candles in stock and I was trying to do the math on carry-on suitcase space as much as I was overall trip budget.
