Soko Hardware
Soko Hardware sells takoyaki pans, donabe and lacquer trays on Post Street. Masayasu and Naka Ashizawa opened it in 1925. Philip Ashizawa runs it now with Eunice Ashizawa, the third generation behind the counter.
Why go
Philip Ashizawa told the San Francisco Standard what brings people back. It is the practical cultural goods: the takoyaki pans, the clay donabe.2 He also says it is the oldest business left in Japantown.
Peter Hartlaub and Nami Sumida reported the Chronicle's project on Japanese incarceration. Ashizawa's grandparents stored the inventory at a friend's used car dealership on Van Ness Avenue before Topaz, the Utah camp they were sent to, so there would be something to come back to.1 They returned straight to Post Street. They owned the building. Japan Center opened in 1968 and displaced the shop. The family protested, then rebuilt across the street. That is twice they started over.
Order this / avoid
- Order: a donabe, if you have a burner that will take one.
- Order: a takoyaki pan, which almost nothing else in the city stocks.
What locals & experts say
- Philip Ashizawa, owner, to The San Francisco Standard, October 2024:
Being here day to day, I don't get to look in the big picture. I'm just concentrating on the here and now. But I do feel pressure to keep the store going.
2 - Peter Hartlaub and Nami Sumida, San Francisco Chronicle, April 2024, on the founders: Masayasu and Naka Ashizawa opened the shop on Post Street in 1925,
selling appliances and tools and becoming community leaders.
1
Good to know
- Getting in: walk in.
- Where: 1698 Post Street, at Buchanan, across from Japan Center.
Verdict
could-visit — Buy something you will actually cook in. This is a hardware store and it behaves like one.