My brother-in-law lives perhaps four blocks from Japantown so we have a tendency to eat there, and eat there a lot. It’s a huge concentration of Japanese eating in a very small area, enough so that Blissful Glutton, in a moment of demographic incompatibility, declared that metro Atlanta had more Japanese eateries than San Francisco did. To note, that’s a comparison of a city of about 750,000 to a greater metropolitan area of around 5.4 million. The two regions are difficult to compare, because they’re not scaled the same at all. But that someone would attempt to compare Japantown, largely, to metro Atlanta speaks to the sheer depth of eating choices there, and the hard core immersion of the experience.

The area of San Francisco’s Japantown is tiny compared to the expanse of Chinatown. A substantial amount of it is within three connected buildings.

The Kinokuniya building is centered around the Kinokuniya bookstore, which surprise surprise surprise, does more than sell manga.

Notable about the Japanese eateries in the Bay area are the outdoor display cases, and the relatively inexpensive lunches. Even Benihana gets in on the act.

Inside the buildings, there are a bewildering array of stores, dealing in everything from fine art to pop culture.

Outside, surrounding the three buildings, are eateries of various kinds. There are Japanese restaurants, to be sure, but also Korean, Chinese, and Hawaiian eateries with a strong Japanese influence.