is a Japanese supermarket chain in America, with locations in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

, and

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

History

As a subsidiary of

Yaohan or ; ) was a Japanese retail group, founded in 1930 by and his wife . Initially a single shop, it was expanded by their son Kazuo Wada into a major supermarket chain with most retail outlets located in Shizuoka prefecture, south of Tokyo. It ...

, ''Yaohan USA'' opened its first supermarket in Fresno in 1979. During its heyday, Yaohan operated eight stores all over the States, as well as four Daikichi sushi shops. Upon bankruptcy of Yaohan in 1997, Yaohan USA was subject to a

management buyout A management buyout (MBO) is a form of acquisition in which a company's existing managers acquire a large part, or all, of the company, whether from a parent company or individual. Management-, and/or leveraged buyout became noted phenomena of 1 ...

by regional management, with rebranding as ''Mitsuwa Marketplace''. Mitsuwa continued to expand its stores, mainly inside California. In December 2012, , a Japanese trading company, acquired Mitsuwa's stock.

Store locations

California

20140401-0110 Mitsuwa Marketplace Irvine

Mitsuwa has seven stores in four metropolitan areas in

: ;

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

* San Jose ;

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

area * Torrance * San Gabriel *

West Los Angeles West Los Angeles is an area within the city of Los Angeles, California. The residential and commercial neighborhood is divided by the Interstate 405 freeway, and each side is sometimes treated as a distinct neighborhood, mapped differently by di ...

;

Orange County Orange County most commonly refers to: *Orange County, California, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area Orange County may also refer to: U.S. counties *Orange County, Florida, containing Orlando *Orange County, Indiana *Orange County, New ...

area * Costa Mesa *

Irvine Irvine may refer to: Places On Earth Antarctica *Irvine Glacier *Mount Irvine (Antarctica) Australia *Irvine Island *Mount Irvine, New South Wales Canada *Irvine, Alberta * Irvine Inlet, Nunavut United Kingdom *Irvine, North Ayrshire, Scotla ...

;

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

area *

The Los Angeles location of Mitsuwa Marketplace in the Little Tokyo neighborhood closed in 2009. In 2019, Torrance closed their previous location in the Old Town Torrance. The new Torrance location within the Del Amo Fashion Center opened in February 2020.

Hawaii

;

Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...

area *

The second-floor Honolulu store is located in the International Market Place in

Waikiki Waikiki (; haw, Waikīkī; ; also known as Waikiki Beach) is a neighborhood of Honolulu on the south shore of the island of Oahu in the U.S. state of Hawaii. Waikiki is most famous for Waikiki Beach, which is one of six beaches in the district ...

Texas

; Dallas/Fort Worth area * Plano Mitsuwa entered the Dallas/Fort Worth area with a store in Plano, an upper-middle-class northern suburb of

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

. The store, which opened in the spring of 2017, is near North Central Expressway and Legacy Drive.

Chicago metropolitan area

Okonomiyaki sauce by Zesmerelda in Arlington Heights, IL

The

Chicago area The Chicago metropolitan area, also colloquially referred to as Chicagoland, is a metropolitan area in the Midwestern United States. Encompassing 10,286 sq mi (28,120 km2), the metropolitan area includes the city of Chicago, its suburbs and hint ...

store is at 100 E. Algonquin Road in Arlington Heights,

— part of a number of Japanese businesses in Arlington Heights — and opened in 1991. The store is open 365 days a year from 9 am to 9 pm. Mitsuwa is the largest Japanese marketplace in the

Midwestern US The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

. The Chicago store is one of three that are east of the Rockies. This Mitsuwa location, like those in other states, was formerly known as

. The food court has many traditional foods, such as sushi,

tempura is a typical Japanese dish usually consisting of seafood, meat and vegetables that have been battered and deep fried. The dish was introduced by the Portuguese in Nagasaki through fritter-cooking techniques in the 16th century. The word ''tem ...

, noodles, etc. It is made of the Otafuku-tei (now replaced by Gabutto Burger), Kayaba, Santouka Ramen, Releaf Matcha, Jockey Express, Daikichi Sushi, Pastry House Hippo, and Mama House restaurants. Mitsuwa hosts the JTB travel agency. There are two entertainment shops in Mitsuwa Chicago, JBC Video, a Japanese video rental store, and

Kinokuniya is a Japanese bookstore chain operated by , founded in 1927, with its first store located in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Its name translates to "Bookstore of Kii Province". The company has its headquarters in Meguro, Tokyo. One of the company's g ...

, a Japanese book shop that sells stationery, novels,

manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

, and other imported media. A

cell phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

store, Galaxy Wireless, is at the Chicago Mitsuwa. Mitsuwa Chicago had a

china China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

store called 'Utsuwa no Yakata'. This store closed on April 1, 2006. Kinokuniya bookstore, which had expanded into the area previously owned by a China store, has been replaced by SanSeiDo. The location has two personal care shops,

Shiseido is a Japanese multinational cosmetic company founded in Tokyo, Japan in 1872. Its product categories consist of: skin care, makeup, body care, hair care, and fragrances. The company is one of the oldest cosmetic companies in the world and ...

, a Japanese cosmetics store, and Super Health, a vitamin and other health supplement store.

New Jersey

The Edgewater,

store is located on 595 River Road. It has a

food court A food court (in Asia-Pacific also called food hall or hawker centre) is generally an indoor plaza or common area within a facility that is contiguous with the counters of multiple food vendors and provides a common area for self-serve dinner. I ...

, a

bookstore Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, bookpeople, bookmen, or bookwomen. The founding of librari ...

owned by

, a gift shop selling

Bape A Bathing Ape (or BAPE) is a Japanese fashion brand founded by Nigo (Tomoaki Nagao) in Ura-Harajuku in 1993.David FischerNIGO Announces His Definitive Departure from BAPE''highsnobiety'', May 25, 2013

clothing and golf clubs, a

video store A video rental shop/store is a Brick and mortar, physical retail business that rents home videos such as movies, prerecorded TV shows, video game discs and other media content. Typically, a rental shop conducts business with customers under cond ...

that carries

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

s and

Laserdisc The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as DiscoVision, MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978. Its diam ...

s of movies and a store selling

Japanese ceramics , is one of the oldest Japanese crafts and Japanese art, art forms, dating back to the Neolithic period. Kilns have produced earthenware, pottery, stoneware, Ceramic glaze, glazed pottery, glazed stoneware, porcelain, and Blue and white porcel ...

and denki-gama, making Mitsuwa more of a mini- mall than a traditional supermarket. It is a small taste of what current Japanese multi-story malls, or subway stations, are like. The supermarket section sells fresh produce and certified

Angus beef The Aberdeen Angus, sometimes simply Angus, is a Scottish breed of small beef cattle. It derives from cattle native to the counties of Aberdeen, Banff, Kincardine and Angus in north-eastern Scotland. In 2018 the breed accounted for over 17 ...

, as well as Japanese drinks and snacks such as

Yakult is a Japanese sweetened probiotic milk beverage fermented with the bacteria strain '' Lacticaseibacillus casei'' Shirota. It is sold by Yakult Honsha, based in Tokyo. It is distributed through convenience stores and supermarkets in single-servin ...

Calpis Calpis ((カルピス, Karupisu))/Milkis ((밀키스, Milkiseu)) is a Japanese uncarbonated soft drink, manufactured by , a subsidiary of Asahi Breweries headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo. The beverage has a light, somewhat milky, and slightl ...

, Ramune, Ikechi Shrimp Chips, Pocari Sweat, Pocky, Pretz, and Japanese liquor such as

Sake Sake, also spelled saké ( ; also referred to as Japanese rice wine), is an alcoholic beverage of Japanese origin made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran. Despite the name ''Japanese rice wine'', sake, and indee ...

and

Shōchū is a Japanese distilled beverage. It is typically distilled from rice, barley, sweet potatoes, buckwheat, or brown sugar, though it is sometimes produced from other ingredients such as chestnut, sesame seeds, potatoes, or even carrots. Ty ...

. The

Books Kinokuniya is a Japanese bookstore chain operated by , founded in 1927, with its first store located in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Its name translates to "Bookstore of Kii Province". The company has its headquarters in Meguro, Tokyo. One of the company's g ...

bookstore section sells Japanese music CDs, novels, job applications, children's books, manga, and imported magazines (including dozens of Japanese fashion magazines) such as

Weekly Shonen Jump Weekly, The Weekly, or variations, may refer to: News media * ''Weekly'' (news magazine), an English-language national news magazine published in Mauritius *Weekly newspaper, any newspaper published on a weekly schedule *Alternative newspaper, als ...

and Disney Fan. There is also a kiosk that sells

Ito En () is a Japanese multinational drinks company specializing in tea production, distribution, and sales. Ito En is the largest green tea distributor in Japan. The Ito En Group includes subsidiaries based in Japan, Indonesia, the United States, Aus ...

tea and Minamoto Kitchoan that sells Japanese sweets such as manju, mochi, and Inja. A Daiso "

100-yen shop are common Japanese shops in the vein of American dollar stores. Stocking a variety of items from clothing to stationery, housewares to food, each item is priced at precisely 100 yen, which is considered attractive to Japanese consumers becau ...

" location opened at the marketplace in August 2019. The New Jersey location used to run an exclusive shuttle bus between the store and the

Port Authority Bus Terminal The Port Authority Bus Terminal (colloquially known as the Port Authority and by its acronym PABT) is a bus station, bus terminal located in Manhattan in New York City. It is the busiest bus terminal in the world by volume of traffic, serving abo ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The bus transported Mitsuwa customers for a nominal fee and it did not make any stops along its route. The service was terminated on December 31, 2014.

References

External links

Official Mitsuwa Marketplace Site(in Japanese Language)
(Archive) {{Supermarkets of the United States Supermarkets of the United States Companies based in Los Angeles County, California Restaurants in Illinois Japanese-American culture in California Japanese supermarkets Restaurants established in 1972 1972 establishments in California