Japantown!

One of my favorite places in San Francisco is Japantown, mostly due to two things there: anime and Japanese food. The mall there is home to Japan Video, my link the renting and buying anime-- Japanese cartoons. Japantown is definitely not the authentic ethnic enclave that Chinatown is, and it might be more accurate to call it Japan mall, since the majority of the neighborhood is the Japantown mall. The shops around the video store in the mall serve tons of treats like green tea ice cream and mochi, a sweet rice confection.

The plaza in the middle of the neighborhood is centered around the Peace Pagoda, which is all decked out for Christmas right now. Speaking of Christmas, the temperature here recently has really been putting me in the Christmas spirit... brrrrrr!