Presidents Message July 2009

President’s Message,

Although I spent most of my years growing up in San Martin, Morgan Hill and West San Jose, our family would often go to the big city to shop for clothes or Japantown to pick up supplies that we couldn’t get locally. One of my fondest memories of growing up were our monthly trips to Jtown to get our haircut at Sakamoto’s, checkout the cool stuff at Kogura’s and Nichi Bei’s, buy groceries at Dobashi’s and buy fish at the Taylor Fish Market. Each time, we would always wrap up our big city trip by a having a bowl of chashu noodles and fried rice at Wings. Unfortunately many of the business are long gone. Their buildings are just signs and shells of a once bustling Japantown. The point that I want to make in this message is that we are very lucky that Jtown has many special stores and shops that contribute to our Betsuin and organizations. In these tough times, if you have the time and can afford it, please make the effort to eat and shop in our Japantown.

Gassho,
Steve Ichinaga