Out and About Food

The tour meets beside the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, in front of the rock sculpture on the brick plaza, both designed by Japanese artist Isamu Noguchi. For coffee and emergency rations, there’s a small sandwich shop in a passageway called Azuza Street, to the left (facing the statue). After everyone assembles, you’re on your way to the bucolic James Irvine Garden, a.k.a. Garden of the Clear Stream, a surprising thatch of greenery and trickling water in the shadow of San Pedro Street’s high-rises. Built with rocks from Mount Baldy and crowded with traditional Japanese plants, the garden’s rushing stream symbolizes the issei’s turbulent life. But the stream winds down to a quiet pool, suggesting subsequent generations finding peace. Incorporated into the tour are old and new monuments, including the First Street North Historic District, the home of Fugetsu-do, L.A.’s first Japanese mochi and sweet shop, nearly a century old. Among the other highlights: the Astronaut Ellison Onizuka monument, the Matsuzakaya America department store, Union Center for the Arts (home of the East-West Players), buildings circa 1925 that are remnants of prewar Japantown, and the Japanese American National Museum’s striking new building, opened last year. The tour ends at Higashi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, near Third Street and Central Avenue.

Lunch spots abound: There’s Frying Fish, with conveyer-belt sushi, or Shabu Shabu Housein Japanese Village Plaza, but there’s also Shangrila Café, a hidden gem, just behind the museum, that incorporates handmade noodles from on-the-premises Kadoya’s soba shop into its menu. Behind the dining room is a serene, shady patio. The restaurant offers the usual array of soba dishes, as well as chicken cutlet, salmon teriyaki, and Japanese-inflected Western dishes such as spaghetti, and smoked salmon with capers on a French-style roll.

Location Info

Map

Jose Chiquito Restaurant

317 S. Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90013-1222

Category: Restaurant > Mexican

Region: Downtown

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Sarita's Pupuseria

317 S. Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Category: Restaurant > South American

Region: Downtown

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Sultan

311 W. Sixth St.
Los Angeles, CA 90014

Category: Restaurant > Middle Eastern

Region: Downtown

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Water Grill

544 S. Grand Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90071

Category: Restaurant > Modern American

Region: Downtown

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Cicada Restaurant

617 S. Olive St.
Los Angeles, CA 90014

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Downtown

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More About

• Santa Monica Pier
• Placerita Canyon Nature Center
• Japanese American National Museum
• Eating Out
• Seafood

After lunch, you may want to return to the museum on your own, as the tour does not go inside. The museum’s Media Arts Center, with its display of action documentaries pertaining to the legacy of Japanese-Americans, can keep you involved for hours. Then there’s shopping. For handmade papers and pottery, there’s Rafu Bussan, and for gifts there’s Bun-ka do and the Little Tokyo Ceramic Gallery and Clay Works.

Los Angeles Conservancy; (213) 623-CITY or (213) 623-2489. Japanese American National Museum, 369 E. First St.; (213) 625-0414. Miyako Inn, 328 E. First St.; (213) 617-2000. A Thousand Cranes, New Otani Hotel, 120 S. Los Angeles St.; (213) 629-1200. Mitsuru Sushi and Grill, 316 E. First St.; (213) 626-4046. Frances Bakery and Coffee, 404 E. Second St. (Honda Plaza); (213) 680-4899. Sandwich Shop, 340 E. Azuza St.; (213) 621-7919. Fugetsu-do, 315 E. First St., downtown; (213) 625-8595. Matsuzakaya America, 460 E. Third St.; (213) 626-4926. Frying Fish, 120 Japanese Village Plaza, downtown; (213) 680-0567. Japanese Village Plaza, 327 E. Second St.; (213) 680-1930. Shangrila Café, 744 E. Third St.; (213) 680-3770.

Mission San Fernando, Placerita Canyon Nature Center, pre-Mission breakfasts, William S. Hart Ranch.

Here’s a close-by, nearly free day trip that lets children see for real the stuff social-studies lessons attempt to make interesting. Though the sojourn begins a short, 25-minute drive from Central L.A., the city seems worlds away. The San Fernando Mission is actually a working church where weddings, memorial services and quincieras take place, sometimes several in a day.

The buildings have been through so much renovation or replacement, due to the Valley’s numerous earthquakes, they seem a tad too cute to be regarded as an ancient relic. Still, the structure’s style is mostly true to history. In the museum, early mission life comes alive in dioramas and other displays depicting native Indian workers weaving, forging iron, preparing adobe bricks. You can pick up a map, with explanatory notes, of the grounds and buildings when paying your entry fee at the gift shop. One chamber that must not be missed is the Madonna Room. Tucked into the last quadrant of the mission’s convento, the dark room lights up and music swells from its doorway when anyone approaches. The room displays an extraordinarily diverse Madonna collection, including a “Madonna of the baseball mound.”

Start your visit with a good, hearty breakfast near the mission; there are several very recommendable spots. The fabulously vintage James Restaurant in San Fernando, east of the mission and the 5 freeway, opens at 5 a.m. It’s renowned for its ham with scrambled eggs or with pancakes, and for its steak picado. Sit on the patio, if you can find a seat. Sierras No. 1 — an old Cal-Mex standby and a good bet â for huevos rancheros or chilaquiles — opens at 11 a.m. If you want to do your eating after the mission visit, Sierras is equally famous for its so-very-light crab enchilada. At El Abuelo (the Grandpa), a modest but popular family-run cantina, the huge, steamy dishes of mole poblano and the steak salad are the things to order.

Placerita Canyon Nature Center is a short jaunt north on the Golden State Freeway (15) to Highway 14 north. Exit at Placerita Canyon Road and proceed east about 1.5 miles. On Saturdays at 11 a.m., there are docent-led nature walks. During the week you can use maps to the self-guided nature trails, some as short as half a mile. The maps, which you can get for free in the office (walk past the snakes and turtle habitat), identify plants, geological formations, animal habitats, and other stuff to amaze and delight kids and their jaded parents.