As a subsidiary of Yaohan, Yaohan USA opened its first supermarket in Fresno in 1979. During its heyday, Yaohan operated eight stores all over the States, as well as four Daikichi sushi shops.
Upon bankruptcy of Yaohan in 1997, Yaohan USA was subject to a management buyout by regional management, with rebranding as Mitsuwa Marketplace.
Mitsuwa continued to expand its stores, mainly inside California. In December 2012, Kamei Corporation [ja], a Japanese trading company, acquired Mitsuwa's stock.
Store locations
California
Mitsuwa's Irvine location opened in 2011.Inside the former Torrance location. The grocery store is to the left, the main food court upper right, and specialty stores selling books and videos lower right. It was closed in 2019, with the new location at the Del Amo Fashion Center opening in February 2020.
Mitsuwa has eight stores in four metropolitan areas in California:
The Los Angeles location of Mitsuwa Marketplace in the Little Tokyo neighborhood closed in 2009.[3] In 2019, Torrance closed the location in Old Town Torrance and reopened within the Del Amo Fashion Center in February 2020.[4] The former building was then demolished in 2023.
Mitsuwa entered the Dallas/Fort Worth area with a store in Plano, an upper-middle-class northern suburb of Dallas. The store, which opened in the spring of 2017, is near North Central Expressway and Legacy Drive. This location has a food court and a Kinokuniya inside. [7][8]
The Chicago area store is at 100 E. Algonquin Road in Arlington Heights, Illinois—one of a number of Japanese businesses in Arlington Heights—and opened in 1991. The store is open 365 days a year[9] from 9 am to 8 pm. Mitsuwa is the largest[10] Japanese marketplace in the Midwestern US. The Chicago store is one of three that are east of the Rockies. This Mitsuwa location, like those in other states, was formerly known as Yaohan.
The largest area of Chicago's Mitsuwa Marketplace is devoted to its grocery section. This department is home to many imported Japanese ingredients which are often hard to find in typical Chicago-area grocery stores, as well as popular Japanese drinks and snacks such as Ramune, Calpis, Pocari Sweat, Yakult, Japanese teas and coffees, Pocky, Pretz, Black Thunder and other Japanese candies, azuki bean and matcha-flavored treats, and more. There are also imported toiletries and makeup, as well as kitchen items including rice cookers, knives, cookware, chopsticks, food storage containers, and Japanese-style dishware.
The food court has many traditional foods, such as sushi, tempura, noodles, and more. It currently[9] comprises the restaurants Santouka Ramen, specializing in ramen; Mugimaru, specializing in udon; Sutadon-Ya, specializing in beef bowls and similar; Tokyo Shokudo, specializing in Japanese cuisine; Toritetsu, specializing in yakitori; Re Leaf, specializing in matcha and café fare; B-Bee Crepe & Boba, specializing in crepes and drinks with boba; and MaMa House, specializing in Korean cuisine. Other shops within Mitsuwa that sell ready-to-eat food are Pastry House Hippo, a Japanese bakery; Mitsuwa NAGOMI, which sells sushi; Lady M, a cake shop specializing in and founded by the inventor of mille crêpes cakes; J.sweets, which sells mochi and other Japanese confectionaries; and ROYCE', which sells chocolates; however, these shops are slightly outside the main food court area itself. There is also a Japanese liquor store. Previous restaurants include Otafuku-Tei (replaced by Gabutto Burger), Gabutto Burger (replaced by Sutadon-Ya), Kayaba (replaced by Mugimaru), Jockey Express (replaced by Tokyo Shokudo), and Daikichi Sushi (replaced by several shops due to minor remodel, but primarily Toritetsu).
Mitsuwa Chicago hosts a Kinokuniya, a Japanese book shop that sells manga, anime figurines, video game artbooks, Gunpla, stationery, novels, and other imported Japanese media and merchandise. This location was once also home to the JTB travel agency, JBC Video (a Japanese video rental store), Galaxy Wireless (a cell phone store), and Utsuwa no Yakata (a Japanese china store which closed on April 1, 2006).
The Chicago location also hosts Aruka's Hair Resort, a hair salon which uses an outside entrance. Mitsuwa Chicago previously had other now-closed personal care shops, such as Shiseido, a Japanese cosmetics store, and Super Health, a vitamin and other health supplement store.
The New Jersey location used to run an exclusive shuttle bus between the store and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. The bus transported Mitsuwa customers for a nominal fee and it did not make any stops along its route. The service was terminated on December 31, 2014.[12]
