Literary Site Type: Indie Bookstore

Founded by Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong in 1994, Giant Robot Magazine began as a punk zine of Asian pop culture which covered art, design, politics, travel, and more. In 2001, the founders established a brick-and-mortar store in the Sawtelle neighborhood of Los Angeles serving as a one-stop shop for books and products regarding Asian pop culture.

Kinokuniya’s Austin location is Texas’s one-stop shop for goods and gifts from Japan, including but not limited to stationery, Studio Ghibli merchandise, toys, magazines, manga books, and more. In addition, the bookstore sells a vast selection of books in both English and Japanese. Unique to this location is an exhibit of a 1920s Japanese classroom, a visual reminder of what schooling was like during the time of the franchise’s founding. As of now, it serves as a meeting place for cultural events and community activities.

This Kinokuniya location sits in the Weller Court Shopping Center of Little Tokyo in Downtown Los Angeles. The store first began as a tiny shop inside of a Little Tokyo hotel before moving to its larger building in 1980. They provide a wide array of books in Japanese and English, including graphic novels and manga, as well as a display dedicated to the various works of Haruki Murakami. They also carry high-quality stationery brands, art supplies, papers and notebooks, and greeting cards.

Bell’s Books offers a delightful and eclectic combination of new, used, and rare books. Their vast collection includes books about gardening, art and architecture, cooking, military science, transportation, religion, natural history, as well as vintage technical books and new children’s books. They have over 150,000 volumes available for perusal, ever-evolving and changing to the local community’s needs and tastes.