Japanese Village Plaza
350 E 1st St
Los Angeles, CA 90012
During this gorgeous weekend, I got a chance to browse Little Tokyo a little more. My last visit can be found here. On this visit, I spent some time in the Japanese Village Plaza, which has quite a few restaurants and stores.
Outside, there was someone performing. Boyfriend seemed fascinated with this and kept watching him and taking pictures.
I saw a bakery, so I had to wander inside. 
Yamazaki bakery was pretty small. There were some breads, donuts, cakes and they advertised soft serve ice cream. I ended up buying some melon pan breads.
While I was browsing the bread selection, Boyfriend pointed these cute fruit tarts out to me:
As soon as I saw them, I remembered seeing them before in Kirk of mmm-yoso's post, but I had completely forgotten about them. The cute individual fruit tarts use whip cream to create adorable looking little dogs.
Of course, I had to get one. I tried to be careful with them while we wandered and shopped, but somehow the box tipped over and the cute dogs got completely ruined. I was so distressed that I didn't get to take a picture for the blog that Boyfriend went back and got me another one. =)
I was so afraid this one would get ruined before I could take a proper picture, so I snapped one in the car. I was really careful with this container for the rest of the night. The ear got a little damaged, but it made it home in one piece.
We saw a small gathering outside of Mitsuru Cafe. 
From the display window, they had takoyaki (fried octopus battered balls) and imagawayaki (pancakes with filling). I didn't know this was the name in japanese for these pancakes. I've only seen taiyaki ones, which are similar in taste but are fish shaped. The regular pancake shaped ones I've seen often in Taipei as a streetfood. I wasn't aware it was a japanese treat too.
I got an order of takoyaki and one imagawayaki. Despite the imagawayki being fresh, it wasn't crispy on the outside, which is how I like mine. The takoyaki were pretty good, but were a bit cold.
There was a Sanrio store, so of course I had to check out the spring Hello Kitty collection
Hello Kitty dressed as a chick has now joined my ever growing collection of plush toys. I visited a few more spots in Little Tokyo which will be covered in some future posts. Hope everyone had a nice weekend!
I love when they are piping hot. I was sad that they were selling the ones that were already premade.
Mitsuru cafe changed their logo! Wonder if the inside changed to be modern too although I would think not so. The takoyaki and imagawayaki usually aren’t piping hot and crisp as usually they sell the premade ones first rather than the ones fresh off from cooking. A toast in the oven does wonders to it though!
it’ll be a while before i do my little tokyo posts. we did a lot that day…we did hi-fi (historic filipino town), long beach, oinkster, etc…
can’t wait to read your little tokyo posts
You are the man! ;o)
That whole setup was made of PVC pipes and it had functional pedals for changing his music like an organ, he also had mismatched socks! He was definitely entertaining along with his wife who was dancing around in the crowd. (I’m assuming the lady was his wife… she could have also been crazy…)
Those dogs were so fragile, it was Kirbie’s special day out in Little Tokyo and we had driven so far. They had to be saved or replaced, since I’m not a vet I had to get a new one.
We see so many random people with cameras taking pictures of food, we can only guess if they are other food bloggers or just people who like taking pictures of food. “That person has a ‘pro’ camera, they’ve gotta be a food blogger!”
Oh wow, I bet we did just pass each other since I was there on Sat afternoon too! Too bad about the photo thing. They are so strict! I think BF used his iphone for most of these shots. I definitely did go to fugetsu across the street!
I’m pretty lucky!
hi kirbie
omg, we were there too this weekend!!!!! we probably passed each other and didn’t know it! 🙂
we were there on sat in the afternoon….i got admonished by a gift store owner because i took a photo of these little bobblehead toys; they were sitting on the toilet and reading a book or something. oops!
did you go to fugetsu-do across the street?
Aaah BF to the rescue! Such a gentleman!