#umeya

[otaku-poi]

[mbainsuranceman]

梅屋のエクレア。 大好き過ぎて。 美味しくないわけがない。　　　 Umeya's ekreas are my favorite. This cost performance is amazing. #umeya #maruiimai #ekrea #asahikawa #sapporo #hokkaido #mbainsuranceman #セブンスイーツアンバサダー (at Sapporo-shi, Hokkaido, Japan) https://www.instagram.com/p/BzsiXcwBlEu/?igshid=rshdfxmbj0e3

[mbainsuranceman]

やつぱり、梅屋のエクレアが好き。美味しい、お手頃、見た目が好き。コンビニスイーツ以上ケーキ未満のちょうどよい幸せ気分を味わえる。 Umeya ekrea makes me always happy. Affordable and delicious ekreas are on sale at maruiimai in Sapporo. I am not willing to say too much words. Just try it. #umeya #ekrea #maruiimai #sapporo #sapporofood #asahikawa #sapporotrip #mbainsuranceman #セブンスイーツアンバサダー (at Maruiimai Satsuporohon) https://www.instagram.com/p/By2i8y8hNyP/?igshid=j3h14ot61aeh

[mbainsuranceman]

令和。 こどもの日。 モンブラン。 梅屋。 #sapporo #umeya #asahikawa #hokkaido #sapporosweets #reiwa #japan #japanfood #childrensday #mbainsuranceman (at Chūō-ku, Sapporo) https://www.instagram.com/p/BxEt3U0APOT/?igshid=fbrcomk35nxr

[mbainsuranceman]

最近ハマっている梅屋。 梅屋のエクレア 流石にコンビニよりも美味しい！ 普通のエクレアと美瑛牛乳を使った生エクレア。 #sapporo #umeya #asahikawa #sapporosweets #エクレア #セブンスイーツアンバサダー (Chūō-ku, Sapporo) https://www.instagram.com/p/BvyfRJKFkVz/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=fcvx7bi5rwn0

[mbainsuranceman]

108円は安い。 梅屋名物しゅうくりぃむ #umeya #asahikawa #sapporo #creampuff #maruiimai #セブンスイーツアンバサダー (Sapporo-shi, Hokkaido, Japan) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvgsym7FpQK/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1dcgcwn23q7h

[tianshanreader]

[californiafolklife]

As Umeya Rice Cake Co. closes, an era ends in Little Tokyo

After 92 years, Japanese rice cracker manufacturer Umeya Rice Cake Co. will close its operations on Dec. 31. The Los Angeles company began selling senbei, or Japanese rice crackers, in 1925.

Takeshi Hamano liked to stroll through the Umeya Rice Cake Co. factory in Little Tokyo, stopping along the way to taste test his senbei, or Japanese rice crackers.

When he’d see employees, he’d stop and quiz them about the production process — from the washing of the rice to the steaming, kneading, cutting, toasting and flavoring of the Japanese snacks.

“He was very good at getting you to say the wrong thing,” said his son Rex Hamano, with a laugh. “But in a mentoring way. He wanted people to get better.”

Rex Hamano took over as president when his father, known by all as “Tak,” died in April at age 92.

Hamano, an accountant by training who said he never felt pressured to become the third generation to run Umeya, described his father as the heart of the business. Ultimately, the family decided that Umeya and Tak Hamano should rest together, so the Los Angeles company will close Dec. 31, after nearly a century in operation.

“That entrepreneurial spirit of never giving up, that’s Tak,” Rex Hamano said. “You can’t transfer that.”

Umeya was one of the few businesses of its kind left in Little Tokyo. It was started by Tak Hamano’s father, Yasuo, with the family’s help both in startup funds and the labor to help make rice crackers by hand in the back of Yasuo’s small shop, sometime around 1918. Umeya Rice Cake Co. was incorporated about 1925.

Umeya’s products proved popular with small Japanese grocery stores, fishing villages and farm camps around California, according to a company history written by Tak Hamano.

The original factory on Weller Street, now called Weller Court, closed in 1942 when the family was sent to an internment camp under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the incarceration of about 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them American citizens.

The family stored its manufacturing machinery and was taken to an assembly center at the Santa Anita race track, then to the Rohwer internment camp in Arkansas. In 1944, the Hamano family was able to reopen the business in Denver.

The demand for rice crackers was high from the internment camps, and the family struggled to fill orders.

Umeya made the move back to Los Angeles in 1950. Because of postwar discrimination toward people of Japanese ancestry, Umeya made it a point of being one of the few corporations to hire immigrants, Rex Hamano said.

Tak Hamano, who took over the company in 1970, helped people start their lives again, said June Aochi Berk, a close friend who was in the same camp during the war.

...

Umeya’s absence will mark another change in Little Tokyo. Several other family-owned Japanese businesses have struggled, closed or sold in the last few years.

Last year, Rafu Shimpo was near shutting down. The newspaper raised enough funds to operate through 2018, but is strategizing for ways to survive permanently, said Ellen Endo, president of the Little Tokyo Business Assn.

Mikawaya, a 107-year-old mochi ice cream shop, which sells in many locations across the country, was bought from the Hashimoto family by a private equity firm in 2015.

The shift in Little Tokyo might be attributed to growing competition, Endo said. New businesses have established in the 11-block neighborhood, drawing people away from Japanese mom-and-pop shops.

Kito said that Little Tokyo businesses once were close-knit, tied together by the necessity of fighting open prejudice and discrimination. But with newer businesses, fewer people know each other, diminishing the sense of community, he said.

Read more.