San Francisco Bay Area Japanese Culture Web Sites

Events	Organizations	Television
Museums and gardens	Newspapers and magazines	Shopping

Events:

This page only lists web pages I do not normally include events announcements.

 

That said there is one place I highly recommend for Japanese cultural events in general.

 

BayAnime.com covers more than just anime events these people do a great job on listing a variety of Japan related happenings around the San Francisco Bay Area.

 

If you know of you now of other good event pages focusing on Japan related events let me know and I will link to it.

Many of the organizations listed below have event calendars which should be checked.

 

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Museums and gardens:

Asian Art Museum Covering all of Asia with a good selection of Japanese art works.

 

Filmore Museum A museum devoted to the area that includes SF's Japantown.

 

Lake Merritt Japanese Garden Oakland's own Japanese garden. More info on one of the craftsmen can be found at: Hiroshi Sakaguchi's Works at the Lake Merritt Japanese Garden

 

Strybing Arboretum & Botanical Gardens Includes a Japanese style Garden

Organizations:

General	Art, music, theater, books
Anime (Japanese animation)	Ikebana

 

General:

 

Cal-Japan Club

 

Center for Japanese Studies (U.C. Berkeley)

 

Japan Society of Northern California

 

Japanese American History Archives

 

Tomodachi U.C. Berkeley Club

 

World Affairs Council (WAC) of San Francisco

Japanese Language Dinners (In and around San Francisco)
Interested in learning Japanese? About the culture? People?

The Japanese Language Dinners are a excellent way of meeting people with the same interest and at various levels of fluency, ages and experiences.

Organized by the World Affairs Council (WAC) of San Francisco, here's the link:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/japanesedinners/

Anime (Japanese animation):

 

Albany:

Beefbowl Anime

 

Berkeley:

Cal-Animage Alpha. Free showings during the school year.

 

Cotati:

Tokyo Tower Anime Club

 

Los Altos:

Foothill Anime

 

Palo Alto:

Stanford New Type

 

San Francisco:

Anime FX San Francisco State University's anime club

 

San Jose:

CA West

 

No Name Anime

 

Tsunami Anime: San Jose State University's anime and manga club

 

San Mateo:

CSM Japanese Animation Association

 

Santa Cruz:

Anonymous Anime Club

 

Slug Committee for Anime & Manga UC Santa Cruz

 

Sunnyvale:

Sunnyvale Anime Club

 

 

Art, music, theater, books:

 

Asian American Arts Foundation

 

Pacific Film Archive Often shows Japanese cinema.

 

San Francisco Taiko Dojo

 

San Jose Taiko

 

Stone Bridge Press

 

 

Ikebana:

 

Ikebana International SF Bay Area Chapter

 

Sogetsu San Francisco Bay Area Branch (Ikebana)

 

Wafu School - California Chapter (Ikebana)

 

Newspapers and magazines:

NikkeiWest Publishing since 1992 for the English-speaking Japanese American community in Northern California. Most of each issue is available online as PDF files. You need to Download the free Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader to read these.

 

Television:
Note; TV Guide and the local newspapers do not have accurate listings for non-English broadcasting so check the web pages for accurate information.

KTSF Channel 26

The station for Japanese programing in Northern California.
Check their Saturday and Sunday evening schedules for the Japanese shows.

This page has a more accurate schedule than the pages for the companies below.

 

Fuji-Com Plaza

Providing a large portion of Japanese TV broadcasting in the Bay Area. Cable not required, these shows are on channel 26. The bulk of their programming is on Saturday night and most of it subtitled, during the week they bring the some of the morning news shows.

 

TTV - Tokyo TV

The folks who bring you the late Saturday night and Sunday night Channel 26 broadcasts. As well as the subtitled weekday news show News Express FCI and the Japanese only NHK News.

Shopping

For shopping districts see my Shin Anime Shopper's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area which while it is focused on anime and manga includes information on major shopping areas for Japanese goods.