Little Tokyo (East Village)

The area in Manhattan’s East Village, around St. Marks Place or 9th Street and between Second and Third Avenues, is sometimes called “Little Tokyo.” Several Japanese restaurants, bars and stores are located in this area, although Japanese restaurants can be found all around New York City.
 
“Then there’s Little Tokyo—East 9th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, dotted with Japanese restaurants, each with something to highly recommend it” was cited in print in 2001.
 
   
Wikipedia: 8th Street/St. Mark’s Place (Manhattan)
8th Street is a street in the New York City borough of Manhattan that runs from Sixth Avenue to Third Avenue, and Avenue B to Avenue D; its addresses switch from West to East as it crosses Fifth Avenue. Between Third Avenue and Avenue A, it is named St. Mark’s Place, named after the nearby St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery on 10th Street at Second Avenue. St. Mark’s Place is considered a main cultural street for the East Village. Vehicular traffic runs east along both one-way streets. St. Mark’s Place features a wide variety of retailers.
           
Chowhound—Manhattan 
Tom Steele
Jun 26, 2001 04:51 PM
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Then there’s Little Tokyo—East 9th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, dotted with Japanese restaurants, each with something to highly recommend it.
 
Plate of the Day   
Wed 25 May 2005
Decibel Sake Bar East Village New York
Posted by admin
On East 9th and St Mark’s between 2nd and 3rd avenue is a small cluster of Japanese restaurants and bars sometimes referred to as Little Tokyo.
 
Adventures in Boredom
SATURDAY, APRIL 08, 2006
OH! Taisho (Yakitori, beer and fun in new Little Tokyo)
Have you been on either St. Marks Place or 9th street between 2nd and 3rd avenues lately? If not, well, you should go and if so, what the fuck happened down there? It used to be all schlock jewelry stores and used CD stores—okay, there are a few of those left—but now it’s like Little Tokyo dining. Not that I’m complaining, cuz, like, I’m not.
 
New York Daily Photo
Real Deal
Posted on July 9, 2008 by Brian Dubé
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Sunrise Mart is a small specialized Japanese grocery store located in an area of the East Village around St. Marks Place sometimes referred to as Little Tokyo.
     
New York (NY) Times
Escape From Japan
By SHERIDAN PRASSO
Published: October 15, 2006
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In the East Village on any given weekend night, throngs of such Japanese crowd the restaurants known as izakaya that have sprung up on and around St. Marks Place, in an enclave sometimes called Little Tokyo. With red paper lanterns and cacophonous dins, the restaurants serve delectables like raw liver sashimi and grilled rice balls, to tables of expatriates known in Japan as “freeters” (a combination of free and the German word for worker, arbeiter), or “NEETs” (Not in Education, Employment or Training).
 
To Live and Eat in NYC 
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 2008
Little India
We happily ventured away from “Little Tokyo” on St. Mark’s - a tourist wasteland reeking of piss, booze, and vomit- and stumbled upon what seemed like Little India.
 
Twitter
Tony Grund
‏@hipstarr
St Mark’s in NYC is quickly becoming Little Tokyo. Give it 5 more years…
5:45 PM - 15 May 2009
 
Twitter
Lila Anton
‏@LILA_WASABI
@rebeltec that’s KoreaTown! And st.marks is little tokyo 😊
2:27 PM - 29 Oct 2009
 
Daily News (New York, NY)
Your neighborhood guide to ‘Little Tokyo’ in the East Village
BY LEAH CHERNIKOFF DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Saturday, January 23, 2010, 3:15 PM
As Film Forum pays tribute to iconic Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, take a trip to the East Village, New York’s little Japan.
 
Between St. Mark’s Place and 10th St. in the East Village, you’ll find the closest thing New York has to “Little Tokyo,” with sushi, ramen and yakitori restaurants, specialty food stores, teahouses, karaoke bars, Japanese gift shops and hair salons.
   
City-Data Forum—New York City
NYC’s Little TOKYO? (Lee, Jefferson: neighborhoods, universities, to live)   
sabotai
07-08-2010, 12:20 AM
The East Village, near St. Marks would be the closest thing to a Japanese neighborhood in NYC. I also frequently hear Japanese spoken in Williamsburg and more recently Bushwick(Morgan/Jefferson).
   
Village Voice (New York, NY)
JIMMY WEBB, TRASH AND VAUDEVILLE BUYER, SPEAKS ABOUT THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD
BY ESTHER ZUCKERMAN WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 2011
(...)
I’m really, really, really, truly offended when the neighborhood is called Little Tokyo. It’s not Little Tokyo, it’s never been Little Tokyo, it’s the Lower East Side.
 
Eater—New York
A Visitor’s Guide to the East Village’s Little Tokyo
by Robert Sietsema, Feb 20, 2015, 12:06p
Centered on the corner of Stuyvesant and East 9th, where the streets form a little triangle with 3rd Avenue, Little Tokyo is a neighborhood within a neighborhood that spreads out like tako tentacles onto at least a dozen blocks of the East Village. Little Tokyo goes back to the early 80s, but it wasn’t until a decade later when the city’s general population became aware of it and started treating the area as a culinary and touristic destination.
 
A boom in the Japanese economy in the 1980s saw a flood of Japanese businesspeople arriving in Midtown, and this prosperity also paved the way for younger expats, who found the East Village more to their liking with its picturesque tenements, jazz and rock associations, and cheap rents. Some came here to attend NYU and stayed. Soon, the East Village became a mecca for Japanese twenty-somethings, and the empty storefronts furnished an opportunity to launch Tokyo-style businesses aimed at the slightly homesick new recruits, remaking izakayas, noodle shops, and sushi bars with an East Village flair.