Utsuwa no Yakata

I have been living in LA for almost 10 years, but I never went into the building called Little Tokyo Galleria Market. The building is semi empty but has several stores including Utsuwa no Yakata, discount shop, and several Japanese restaurants. The grocery store there turned into a Korean store, but you can still get lots of Japanese items in there, too.

Anyway, the purpose of this trip was to look for some souvenirs we will take to Czech Republic. We used to go to a store called "Wabi Sabi" which used to be in West Hollywood whenever we wanted to get something nice from Japan. They eventually moved to Santa Monica, but I heard they closed off. Too bad. We really liked the lacquer dishes and trays they had.

So, I did some search and found this place called "Utsuwa no Yakata." The store got variety of tableware and other cool stuff like "noren" and handmade artwork. They also had a set that you can use to do tea ceremony. Believe it or not, I used to do tea, meaning I learned Sado - how to serve tea in a traditional ceremonial way when I was in Junior High School (okay, long time ago). The tea served in Sado is differnt from the tea you are used to drink at the American sushi places. It is called Matcha, and it is finely powdered. The store sold everything you need for Sado including Matcha!

If you are looking for Japanese style tableware, I would definitely recommend this place.