Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 10

Hello Stephanie!

I was just at Sawtelle yesterday with my roommate, grabbing a bite to eat at SushiStop. I've heard a lot of people referring to this area as Little Osaka. The name is suitable as Osaka is known for being one of the best food places in Japan, and although small, there's always a great selection of food to choose from on Sawtelle.

I found interest in your observations of Little Osaka being a much more commercial area and lacking the historical and cultural aspects that Little Tokyo holds.This made me reflect back to my own experiences in both places. I think there are several factors that might contribute to the differences of these two geographic locations.

At first thought I assumed that perhaps, Little Tokyo simply has a denser Japanese population than Little Osaka which allows it to be more expansive. Using SimplyMaps, I mapped out the % the population in the area that had a Japanese ancestry by block group within their zip codes.

Look at the maps, Little Osaka (the top map) actually has a greater percentage of those who came from a Japanese ancestry than Little Tokyo (the bottom map) who's Japanese descendent population varied greatly within the region.

This could be because of the size itself. Little Osaka is a lot smaller than Little Tokyo, which limits the space they have to expand to include more cultural aspects. Also, Little Osaka started out as a few small shops to serve food for Japanese workers in the area. It's historical function is reflected now as a commercial area for locals to buy groceries, or get a haircut by Japanese stylist. Little Tokyo, however, started out as large industrial companies from Japan decided to move themselves to the states. With them, they brought their culture which they hoped to share and be accepted.

Reflecting back on the idea of ancestral density--perhaps because Little Osaka is so dense with Japanese people, they are already familiar with their own culture and do not feel the need to have public cultural structures to remind them. Little tokyo caters to a more diverse population, where they may feel a stronger need to use cultural symbols to signify Japan's distinctive culture in attracting the attention and understanding of outsiders (tourists).

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This week I decided to write my blog about Sawtelle, which is fairly close to UCLA.
When I got there the first thing mainly because I wanted to compare it to an earlier blog that I has done on Little Tokyo.

The first thing I notice was that though Japanese stores and restaurants make up the majority of Sawtelle, there is definitely more East Asian variety here: Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants were also present.

Here we see a Japanese restaurant, and Chinese restaurant and a Korean restaurant (Not visible in the picture)

In the Picture above we see a little plaza, many of the businesses found here can also be found in Little Tokyo.

There is also a Japanese supermarket, though perhaps with less variety than the one found in Little Tokyo.

Interestingly enough, though the street of Sawtelle, which is where all these businesses are located, is extremely busy. The surrounding streets also include Santa Monica and Olympic which are always in use and the 405 freeway is about 2 blocks down in Santa Monica Blv. However, the houses and apartments surrounding Sawtelle are really quiet and peaceful looking. There are no signs of social disturbance.

They were not as fancy looking as the ones found in the suburbs of South Pasadena, but they were certainly not surrounded by chaos, like the ones found in other Inglewood. Some had gates others did not and some had lawn while other did not care much for the aesthetics. There was a lot more diversity in the living quarters than South Pasadena, where most houses look exactly the same. Population was definitely more diverse.

I was interested in this particular place because it had been presented to me as a second Little Tokyo, and since I had done a blog on LT before I wanted to compare. However, unlike Little Tokyo, this place seems to be a lot more corporate, in the sense that it is mostly business related and shows little to nothing about their history or culture. At first I thought it was because this area was more recent and thus was led in such as way while Little Tokyo was more historic. My reasoning for this was the the sort of people I saw in each location. Little Tokyo seemed to be more diverse in age groups while Sawtelle tends to be a lot more youth oriented. 

After doing some research of the area though, they both appear to have been shaped during similar times. I could not find much on why the places turned out so much different despite their connection with each other (as stated earlier, many businesses are found in both places). The only thing that could possibly explain this is the history of the incorporated part of the city, which is greatly devoted to veterans. Perhaps it was too much to have too much history concentrated in one place?

Overall it was a good experience.