"Well, everything changes," Yamaguchi says, chuckling. "Some people like it the same ol' quaint way. I find it a little hectic around here. I prefer it to be a little slower. Now it's a little hot spot where you can't find parking. It's quite busy all the time."
"It's thriving. Period. I think that's a great thing, in itself," says Audrey Shiomi, 29, a reporter for L.A. Japanese-language newspaper the Rafu Shimpo. She grew up mere blocks away from Sawtelle, and her parents and grandparents still live there.
"It's indicative of the changes in the Japanese community," she adds. Her office, she explains, is in Little Tokyo, where the story is much different. "Little Tokyo is already pretty much dead. We're a struggling community out here. People look at our institutions, the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and the Japanese American Citizens League, and think that it's still very strong. But compared to before, you just don't see people walking on the street on the weekends, coming here to go to the Japanese market."
Sawtelle's Nijiya Market, by contrast, is jammed on weekends. It's a modern market, built in the 1990s, featuring most of the same groceries that the older Japanese American residents always bought, but not the same attitude. The nearby boutiques and restaurants pull in the crowds, and the market is open late into the weekend night. Shiomi thinks Sawtelle's steadily morphing popularity is a good thing, even if one of her old hangouts, Yamaguchi's, is considering throwing in the towel.
"Looking at Sawtelle, it is kind of sad to see a lot of my parents' and my grandparents' businesses close up," she says. "But at the same time, what are you going to do?"
"The area is definitely changing," says Eric Nakamura, 36, owner of the two Giant Robot stores on the block and the eclectic restaurant gr/eats. As a businessman responsible for three storefronts, his main concern is surviving.
"It's a good mix of people. There are a lot of UCLA students. I think it's better that way. That helps the businesses out. You get more variety and everyone has a stronger base as a result."
STANDING outdoors in front of Orris on a recent Friday night, Westside resident Jonathan Gottlieb and two friends braved a light rain to try the well-reviewed restaurant.
"It's my first time to Orris, actually," Gottlieb says, "but I come to this area every few weeks."
