LA airport area Japanese/oriental markets?

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Dina Lerret" <bunniqula at ...>
wrote:

> So, I'm hoping some of y'all can help.  What are some Japanese-centric
> food markets near the Los Angeles airport area?  I'm going to LA for a
> convention and to enjoy myself, so I don't want to spend four days all
> over LA trying to find a certain type of 'ramen noodles'. {g}  Help,
> please?  I'm also doing a store search on the internet and planning on
> making some calls to those that have numbers online.

LA area has about six airports that house scheduled airlines, but I
expect you mean LAX. I'm sorry I'm not familiar with Westchester and
El Segundo (the area around and the area next to the Hotel
Neighborhood of LAX) but LA's Little Tokyo is in Downtown, south and
west of Union Station, like maybe First and Second Streets from
Alameda Blvd to maybe San Pedro Street... The New Otani Hotel is there
and the Japanese-American Museum, and Japanese Village Plaza (a
shopping center), and the Mitsuwa supermarket is on Alameda at Third....

Closer to LAX (but probably far less convenient if you rely on public
transportation) there is a smaller Little Tokyo on Sawtelle north of
Olympic. In my childhood, that was where we went to tiny restaurants
for miso soup and tempura and sukiyaki and then to tiny gift shops to
yearn over mother-of-pearl chopsticks and brocade (is the name tabi?
my memory is failing in old age) and there were still lots of Japanese
(plant) nurseries there ... but I'm not sure how much of that remains
since the 1970s/80s thing of Japanese banks building giant skyscrapers
there...

Hey, do you know the name of a candy whose brand was Hapi Bon-Bon that
were these little bricks of fruit-flavored gel wrapped in edible
cellophane further wrapped in regular cellophane with a paper round
the middle like a cigar band, which had a picture of the fruit that
this particular brick tasted like? I *adored* them in my childhood,
still found them wonderful when I found them in a grocery in Japanese
Village Plaza 20 years ago, and haven't been able to find them since,
not even searching the Internet. I think Google would be more helpful
if I knew their name...