Last week I went to Mitsuwa, a Japanese marketplace with a number of stores across the country, including one in Edgewater, New Jersey. A $3 bus from the NYC Port Authority Bus Terminal will take you there, but you have to know where to get off and walk across a parking lot. I went with my friend Angie, who grew up near there for a few years and so knew what bus to take, where to depart, and what we were about to see (although admitted it had been around 5 years since she’s been here).

If you ever spent time outside of any super-dense urban center in America, then you probably have some association with Mitsuwa’s setup. A big food court with some adjacent stores, some weird shops owned by lonely men with exotic hobbies, a bakery or two, and a grocery to top things off, with an expensive restaurant near this mini-mall of sorts. Mitsuwa’s difference of course being that it’s a strictly Japanese and Asian styled market, so you’ll find tempura instead of french fries; ramen instead of pizza; green tea instead of coffee. If you’ve ever traveled to Asia, you’ll recognize the clash, or rather mutual combination, of east and west approaches:

The Food Court

Everything is displayed and decided based on visual layout and aesthetics. You can see what you’re about to eat, and it’s coated in a type of resin that gives it all a glossy seduction – it’s hard to not want to eat here!


The Grocery

is I’d estimate 90% imported goods from mostly Japan, but also South Korea and a few other Asian countries. I only recognized one-half aisle of cold refrigerated goods from Western sources, and these were overpriced since they were, given the context, exotic. There were palettes of rice; a seaweed aisle; Asian candies; a Pocky section; over 30 types of mushrooms; strange fruits; some really delicious Japanese iced coffees; very few butchered meats and many many types of seafood; and so-on.


manga hair dye aisle (this one’s for you Cassie!)


they even have a seaweed aisle! wow!

The bookstore


golf books section, complete with 3d model! They even had golf manga. Really strange adaptation of a Western sport, apparently it’s a big seller!

The place

is actually much larger than my images make it out to appear. The foodcourt could easily seat 300 people; the grocery is a full-size supermarket, as big as any Costco, Dierbergs, or Jewel-Osco as you might find throughout other parts of the country; there’s a full-size bookstore; a nick-nack store; a dinnerware store (lots of kettles, chopsticks, soup bowls, etc.); et cetera et cetera et cetera. From the back of the Mitsuwa marketplace there’s a really great view of the Upper West Side of Manhattan including some buildings I’ve never seen before, as they are otherwise masked by some obstruction – a taller building, some density of trees.

The view

of Manhattan from New Jersey, heading back into the city.

journeys