Our journey is coming at the end!! On the penultimate day of the Tour, enjoy Japanese culture, stroll through the beatiful square with Victorian houses next to it and discover San Francisco’s City Hall!!
Japantown: before 1906, San Francisco had two Japantowns, known in Japanese as Nihonmachi, one near Chinatown and the other in the South Park neighborhood. After the 1906 earthquake devastated the city, Japanese immigrants moved to the current location. And so, the neighborhood became, during World War II, one of the largest populations of Japanese people outside Japan. However, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942, Japanese-born and descendants were taken to concentration camps. When it was all over, many Japanese chose not to move back to Japantown, leaving San Francisco or moving in other neighborhoods. San Francisco’s Japantown is one of the last three Japanese group in the United States, all three of which are located in California. Today, after more than 100 years, it remains home to Japanese and Japanese-American immigrants. In addition, it also houses Koreans, Chinese, among nationalities. Japantown is made up of 6 blocks, its main street being Post Street. In this region it is possible to find restaurants with local cuisine (such as Benkyodo – Family business since 1906), karaokê bars (such asTown Music Karaoke e Doremi Music Studio), three malls (East Mall – Miyako; West Mall – Kintetsu; Kinokuniya Mall) that form the Japan Center (built in 1960 with traditional Japanese and Asian themes), Kinokuniya Bookstore (the only bookstore outside Japan, opened in 1969, which is part of huge chain of Japanese bookstores. It has Japanese and English books, books about Japan, and Japanese items related to anime and J-pop – short for Japanese pop or Japanese popular music), Daiso Japan store (chain of Japanese stores that sells virtually everything from household items to), AMC Kabuki 8 (movie theater), hotels (such as Kabuki Hotel and Kimpton Buchanan Hotel), Cottage Row (located between Bush St. and Sutter St., has homes dating back to the mid-19th century), Nijiya Market (has a variety of jams, jellies, sauces, fish, among other things), Soto Zen Mission of San Francisco – Sokoji (a temple founded in 1934 by Reverend Hosen Isobel and Japanese Americans, where people can practice zazen meditation. For more information, access the site), San Francisco Peace Pagoda (1968 five-story concrete shrine designed by Japanese architect Yoshiro Taniguchi, a gift from Osaka, Japan, sister city to San Francisco). During the spring the Cherry Blossom Festival (Northen California Cherry Blossom Festival) is held, which takes place over two weekends with differents schedules at the beginning of April, and during a weekend in August, the Nihonmachi Street Fair is held, with a wide variety of art, music and food. That way, it’s like taking a little trip through Japan and going through its old and new culture, between anime, ceramics, kimonos, sushi, manga... To learn more about Japantown, visit the neighborhood’s website.
Alamo Square: it’s a square high up in Hayes Valley, where dogs are allowed, you can have a picnic, and there is another postcard and one of the symbols of San Francisco, the famous colored houses, ‘The Painted Ladies’, also known as 6 Sisters, built between 1892 to 1896 which remain intact after the earthquake and fire of 1906. Painted Ladies is an architectural term used for Victorian-style homes. They appear in more than 70 films and series, we will see more about this in Clapperboard. Climbing to the top of the lawn, you can see both old (like the Victorian-style homes) and new (like the Transamerica Pyramid) San Francisco.
Civic Center: it is an area built in the beginning of the 20th century, after the City Hall was destroyed by the earthquake and fire of 1906, which has some cultural and governamental institutions in the city. The current town hall was completed in 1915, just in time for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, as part of the City Beatiful Movement architectural project. Its dome is the fifth largest in the world, ahead of the dome in Washington DC. It is the site of many weddings and photographs of couples, the building is open from Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm, with free admission. For more information, visit the city’s website. The Civic Center is a site of major political demonstrations, anti-war protests since the Korean War, and was the scene of major moments of the Homesexuals Rights Movement. Today its main points are: Civic Center Plaza (square that hosts various festivals and paredes, such as the San Francisco Pride Parede, the Earth Day celebration, the St Patrick’s Day parede), Asian Art Museum (opened in 1966 as a wing of the Young Museum, today it houses one of the most comprehensive collections of Asian art in the world, with over 18,000 works of art in its permanent collections, some as old as 6,000 years. For more information, visit the museum’s website), San Francisco Library Public (city public library opened in 1879. Moved to Civic Center in 1888. And for more information, visit the website), Pioneer Monument (granite monumento created in 1894 by artist Frank Happersberger and financed by millionaire James Lick. The monumento consists at the top of a female figure of Athena or Minerva, goddness of wisdom and war, at its base four scenes that tell the history of California, below it has portrait medallions of white men that Happersberger credited as founders of the state, and below that are names associated with the history of California), United Nations Plaza (square, also known as UN Plaza, dedicated in 1975 to commemorate the formation of the United Nations and the signing of the United Nations Charter in 1945), SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, built in 1935 and renovated in 2016, making it the largest Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in the United States), War Memorial Opera House (an opera house built in honor of San Francisco’s dead from World War I and which hosted two historic moments: the drafting of the United Nations Charter in 1945 and the ceremony at which the United States restored Japanese Independence in 1951. For more information visit the website https://sfopera.com/) and Bill Graham Civic Auditorium (built in 1915 as part of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the auditorium honors businessman Bill Graham. The building has hosted significant cultural events such as the 1920 Democratic National Convention, Martin Luther King Hr. in 1956. For more information, acess the website).
What are you thinking of the trip??
Stay tuned for the next post of Let’s Travel the World!!
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