Nijiya

Let's revisit the New Year's feast. I failed to mention that you can't buy very many of the ingredients at your neighborhood Safeway. In Seattle, we have a couple local Japanese grocery stores that sell the required amenities - Uwajimaya (lovingly called "waji's" by locals) and Maruta. You can pretty much get anything you need from these 2 places.

Unfortunately, Livermore is not an overflowing pot of rainbow soup - not a lot of Asians. Therefore, it does not behoove the city or any smart business man, to bring a Japanese supermarket to town. As a result, we drive to San Francisco. Yes, there are probably closer stores, but someone else was driving, so I wasn't going to complain.

Nijiya is located in Japantown. It has all the food you need for a proper New Year's Day feast and the world's smallest aisles. Think of a time you felt decently crowded, then add a shopping cart and quadruple the number of people....that's what it was like. And a Japanese grandma on New Year's Eve is typically on a mission....and you don't want to get in her way.

Every Asian person in a 15 miles radius was shopping there on Thursday. And there was no sort of line control either - willy nilly. Drove me nuts, but we got out with everything we needed. So if you need something from a Japanese market, and you live in Livermore....tough luck for you.