G350 Project

G350 Project How Close Together Do Japanese Stores Want To Be??

Mutsumi Nishii
GEOG 350 Data Acquisition in GIS
Fall 2005

ABSTRACT

People who share the same culture tend to crowd together. But how close together? With the improvement of technology, it is very easy to conduct an experiment to answer this question. This experiment focused on Japanese stores and it took place in two major cities in California, Los Angeles and San Francisco, where many Japanese people reside. Using the Global Positioning System (GPS) device, the locations of the Japanese stores were recorded. The data collected shows the stores were located very close to each other and they were sited within 500 meters from major Japanese Hotels.

INTRODUCTION

Many cultures coexist in the United States. Many people from all over the world come here
for many different reasons. Japanese are no exception. For a long time Japanese people have
been having a big obsession towards the United States. Japan has tried to be like the United
States and for a lot of people coming to the United States is part of their dreams. Some of the
people stay in this country for a couple weeks, some people stay for a couple years, and some
people stay here for the rest of their lives.

California is one of the states where you can find different ethnicities everywhere you look.
This state is the home to one-third of the nation's immigrants (McCarthy and Vernez, 1997).
Not surprisingly, California is the state with the highest Japanese population in the United
States. A lot of them have settled for a long time and, as you know, there are a lot of Japanese Americans
living in this state(McCarthy and Vernez, 1997).

It seems like it is a natural phenomenon that people want to eat what they grew up eating and
simulate their living environment similar to the one they grew up with. In the major cities in
California, you can find many Japanese Stores. Since there are so many stores, my question
became "how clustered are the stores?" The experiment to find out how close together the
stores are located was conducted using GPS, and the Geographic Information System (GIS)
software, ArcGIS from ESRI.
BACKGROUND

In the early 1600s, Japan started to stop trading with other countries to control the trading market and to stop the spread of Christianity in Japan. In 1639, Japan completed their isolation from the rest of the world. This is known as the Policy of Seclusion. Japanese could not leave the country and the people that had left the country could not come back in. This isolationism lasted until 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry, of U.S Navy, came to Japan and forced Japan to open the ports. The 200 years of isolationism let Japan create a unique culture but at the same time Japan was left behind in terms of technology and other developments happening in the overseas (Gakken, 1999).

After the ports were opened, Japan tried to catch up to the rest of the world and started to actively send people overseas. Also, around that time, Japan had raised the taxes so they could enrich the nation and build up defenses. Taxes and the fact that there were too many people in Japan made many people's lives very hard. Many people went abroad, mostly to Hawaii, for labor (Moriyama, 1988). In 1869, settlers with The Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony were among the first to arrive from Japan to the United States. Most of the settlers engaged in agriculture (Wikipedia, 2005). Since then, the number of Japanese
immigrants continued to increase, especially in California because it is the closest state to Japan.
Little Tokyo in Los Angeles is the largest Japanese town in North America. Little Tokyo is located in central LA, surrounded by Main Street, Alameda Street, 1st Street, and 3rd Street. It is said that Little Tokyo was started by some Japanese people who opened a few restaurants in 1886. When people started to immigrate to Los Angeles, people gathered and by 1900 there were more than 2,000 people living in that area.
Around the same time Little Tokyo started to grow, Japan Town of San Francisco was starting to grow as well. Japan Town is bordered by Geary Boulevard, Fillmore Street, Laguna Street, and Bush Street. Not much detail is known due to the loss of records by the earthquake. Japan Town has moved its location several times but it settled in the current location in the early 1900s.

METHOD

The experiment took place in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, and Japan Town in San Francisco. The GPS points were taken by walking around the area. The points were recorded in front of every Japanese store. The process of taking GPS points ended when the next Japanese store was no longer visible from the last store that the GPS point was taken. In this experiment, stores were categorized as “Japanese” when the stores are selling Japanese things, when the name of the store is in Japanese, or when there is Japanese writing in the store. These points were then downloaded into the computer and mapped using ArcGIS (Fig. 3 and Fig. 4). Satellite images downloaded from the USGS web site were then mapped together with the points.

RESULTS

In Los Angeles, 142 points were recorded and in 48 points in San Francisco (Fig. 5 and Fig. 6).

The yellow points are the GPS points recorded and the red polygons are the Japanese hotels in the area. In both locations, the Japanese stores were located within 500 meters from the major Japanese hotels, Miyako Hotel and Hotel New Otani.
DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION

One of the problems encountered during the experiment was to set the boundaries between
Japanese stores and non-Japanese stores, especially in San Francisco. In San Francisco, there
were many Korean stores in the area as well. There were stores that seemed half Korean and
half Japanese. Having Japanese writing in the store was part of the criteria set to categorize
stores being "Japanese." This criterion worked for the most part except for one store,
Denny's. The restaurant has a sign in Japanese but clearly, Denny's is not a Japanese store so
the point was not recorded. Also, in both cities, there were locations in which the GPS points
could not be taken. This happened near tall buildings, where the satellite reception was lost.
As a result, certain Japanese stores were not recorded on the GPS, which decreased the
accuracy of the data. The tall buildings also could be the reason why parts of the GPS points
do not seem to be where they are supposed to be.

Looking at the information gathered and the Yellow pages, it seems like there are many
Japanese restaurants and Japanese grocery stores very far from "the cluster" but not the other
stores such as Japanese video stores, Japanese dollar store, or pottery stores.
For further research, it is desirable to get the addresses of the Japanese stores that were
outside of the study area for this experiment and map them either by the same procedure or using geocode.
Also, since the stores were recorded when I was able to see them from the last store, it is expected
that the stores are clustered. So, by getting the information from the yellow pages will give us a better
idea of the spread of the Japanese stores. And, possibly be used by the people who are planning to add
more Japanese stores in the area.
SOURCES
Gakken. August 1999. Gakken Encyclopedia Database. http://db.gakken.co.jp/jiten/sa/201900.htm

McCarthy, Kevin F. and Vernez, Georges. 1997. "Immigration in a Changing Economy. California's Experience."
Pennsylvania, RAND. p. 1-2
Moriyama, Alan T. "Japanese Immigration History - Japan, Hawaii, and USA- " PMC Co. 1988.

Wikipedia. 2005. www.ja.wikipedia.org "Policy of Seclusion"