Rokkatei offers highly distinctive products, led by its signature Marusei Butter Sandwich, and enjoys enduring popularity among fans both inside and outside Hokkaido. That said, as a rule, its brick-and-mortar expansion has been limited to within Hokkaido.
While products can be obtained across Japan via home delivery through online orders, or at department store and supermarket pop-up events, it’s no exaggeration to say that this doesn’t compare to the fun of visiting stores in Hokkaido, where you can choose deeply seasonal items and enjoy a wide lineup that includes cakes and sundries.
Upon hearing that the company had opened its first overseas store in Southern California, I flew in from Japan to take a closer look on the ground.
About 100 km from Los Angeles: Four hours with bus transfers from the airport
I have spent time living in California, and once I pinpointed the store’s location, I realized this was going to be quite a haul.
The store is in Rancho Cucamonga, about 70 kilometers from central Los Angeles. For reference, 70 kilometers from Tokyo would be around Chichibu City in Saitama Prefecture. Chichibu has a direct limited express from Ikebukuro, but there’s no public transportation that runs directly from Los Angeles to Rancho Cucamonga. Being a glutton for punishment, I deliberately made the trip by public transit with transfers. The one-way travel distance tops 100 kilometers.
I left Los Angeles International Airport around 10:00 a.m., transferred via the transit center and a tram, and made my way to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. This leg took about an hour and a half. There is a direct airport bus to Union Station, but if there’s traffic the travel time can balloon—an annoying downside—so it’s not my preference.
From Union Station, I took Foothill Transit’s Silver Streak express bus to Montclair. It was nice that the fare from the airport to Montclair was extremely cheap at just $2.25 with a TAP card (the Los Angeles area transit IC card), but it had already taken about two and a half hours to get this far and I was feeling the fatigue.
At the Montclair Transit Center, I transferred to a bus to Rancho Cucamonga ($2). I had about a 30-minute layover, but there wasn’t a single shop—nothing to do but take in the scenery. Compared with the common image of Los Angeles as all cityscape and residential areas, it felt like I’d come to the middle of nowhere.
It was 45 minutes by bus from Montclair to Rancho Cucamonga, then about a 15-minute walk from the bus stop through Victoria Gardens, an open-air shopping mall.
From Los Angeles International Airport, which has nonstop flights from Japan, the total travel time was around four hours. Thanks to the characteristically low fares of U.S. public transportation, the total cost was only $4.25 (roughly 600 yen), which I appreciated, but the access is quite demanding in terms of both time and stamina.
Notice
This article was generated using automatic translation by GPT-4 API. The translation may not be accurate.
