The pack of young women stationed outside FuRaiBo, a Japanese-style pub or izaka-ya on West Los Angeles' Sawtelle Boulevard, is a subtle but sure sign that there's more going on in this short block of Japanese mini-malls than just an exotic lunch at Sawtelle Kitchen or Hurry Curry.
Surrounded by unremarkable office buildings, nurseries and neon storefronts, the young scenesters casually dressed in jeans and belted knit sweater-jackets shudder in the Friday evening chill and steel themselves for what they've been told will be a one-hour wait to get in the new pan-Asian youth hotspot.
Inside, the crowd is a blend of Japanese hipsters, college students of many Asian ethnicities and even the odd couple with a baby mobbing the tables under the dramatic glow of Japanese lamps. The latest J-pop hits (the sugary-sweet Japanese equivalent of Top 40 songs) thump from the speakers, underlying the clatter of dishes and rowdy laughter as pitchers of beer pass overhead.
An orderly array of shoes lined up outside a private room with walls of tatami, rice straw matting, where customers sit on fabric floor cushions around four tiny tables, is a reminder that this is, after all, a Japanese club. But the youthful presence, along with the area's scattering of authentic Japanese pop culture shops, makes it clear that this isn't anything like downtown L.A.'s Little Tokyo or Gardena's Japanese neighborhoods. Sawtelle Boulevard, from Olympic to Santa Monica boulevards, is for the young.
Think of it as a dollhouse version of Japan Town, U.S.A., where a cluster of restaurants and stores nudge one another along a street that looks sedate during the day but where boba tea houses and karaoke studios with private rooms buzz well into the wee hours. It's also a hub for alternative pop media, with shops trading in used manga--novel-length Japanese comics--and the locally famous Video Addict rental store, which specializes in Asian films.
Little Tokyo, the oldest and largest of Japanese communities in Los Angeles, is museum-like by comparison, swathed in multiple layers of Japanese American history. To young, homesick natives of Japan, it's just not happening. Clusters of Japanese businesses are also found in Gardena and Torrance, where eateries have sprung up to feed hungry salarymen from nearby Japanese corporations.
Sawtelle, however, thrives on Japanese food and pop culture, a lure for explorers from East and West.
