When Friedia Niimura moved to the U.S. from Japan in her mid-20s, she shared a dream with many Angelenos: appearing, or perhaps style. A TV and media persona in Japan, it appeared a pure match, solely she didn’t take to the aggressive tempo of Los Angeles.
So she dove into one among her different passions: paper.
“After I got here to L.A., I seen there weren’t a whole lot of specialty stationery boutiques,” Niimura says. “Whenever you’re in Japan, they’re in every single place and you’re taking them as a right. That’s how I’d spend my days off. I’d go to the stationery and browse and take my pocket book and draw.”
Friedia Niimura outdoors her store Paper Plant Co., which occupies two Chinatown storefronts and shares an area with Thank You Espresso. Niimura spent her teen years in Japan earlier than altering her profession.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Instances)
Niimura created a spot the place one can just do that. Chinatown’s Paper Plant Co. is her stationery outpost, manufactured from two small storefronts that share an area with Thank You Espresso and boast outside seating. A communal vacation spot since 2020, the store has earned a status for specializing in notebooks, stickers and pens from Japan. Or, as Niimura describes Paper Plant’s aesthetic: “cute.”
“After we decide one thing and all of us go, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so cute,’ then we all know it’s going to do very well,” Niimura, 45, says. “I don’t understand how in Japan they all the time give you cute eventualities and cute scenes and cute gestures. It’s virtually like there’s a college on how to attract canine doing cute issues, cats doing cute issues.”
Paper Plant will on Oct. 11-12 play host to Bungu LA, believed to be the primary correct stationery pageant within the metropolis. Niimura has handpicked Bungu’s 60 or so exhibitors, with the overwhelming majority of them touring right here from Japan. Bungu is impressed by related occasions Niimura has gone to in Tokyo or New York. Paper Plant, as an illustration, exhibited final 12 months at a pageant hosted by Brooklyn’s Yoseka Stationery.
“There was a line every single day,” Niimura says, describing the New York fest. “It was simply my retailer supervisor and I, and we have been like, ‘How come L.A. doesn’t have one?’ After which who would do it? It all the time got here again to us, since now we have that relationship with Japanese creators.”
Like most every part Paper Plant-related, Niimura has been figuring it out on the fly. Paper Plant, as an illustration, was initially funded virtually completely by bank cards, a marketing strategy Niimura wouldn’t suggest to others. Bungu will take over a part of a concourse at downtown’s Union Station, and the hope is to make it an annual occasion. The objective for the primary 12 months is to easily break even, as Niimura jokes that she doesn’t but know the ultimate price of staging a pageant.
“We needed to additionally hire out a entrance sidewalk, which was one other $10,000 that I hadn’t added to the price range,” Niimura says.
The response, nevertheless, has been overwhelmingly constructive. In style Japanese corporations comparable to Hobonichi might be in attendance, however Niimura says she made an effort to safe distributors which have by no means earlier than offered within the U.S. Advance tickets of $25, for which about 1,500 have been made accessible per day, have offered out. There’ll, nevertheless, be walk-up tickets offered every day of the present. Niimura is hoping to draw 2,500 individuals per day.
Stickers, says Paper Plant Co. proprietor Friedia Niimura, are massively fashionable for the time being. (Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Instances)
Paper Plant Co. makes and sells unique greeting playing cards. (Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Instances)
Niimura herself remains to be discovering new joys within the stationery world. She notes that solely lately has she change into smitten with fountain pens.
“In Japan, fountain pens are geared towards older gents,” she says. “They usually’re costly. The very nice ones could be hundreds of {dollars}. Now we have ones which are a pair hundred, but additionally newbie ones for about $20. I began off with these, however I lately acquired a pair hundred greenback ones, and it’s life altering — the way in which the ink comes out is so clean. Upon getting one, it’s arduous to return to a daily pen.”
As a part of Bungu, Niimura is encouraging attendees to discover L.A.’s public transit and the walkability of Chinatown. Maps might be given out at Bungu for which friends can gather three stamps, one on the occasion, one on the Chinatown Metro Rail station and one at Paper Plant. Those that full the mini scavenger hunt might be given a free present at Paper Plant, which Niimura is maintaining a secret.
With the rise of collage and zine-making workshops, youthful generations are connecting with paper and Niimura notes that one-day planners and scrapbooking right now have change into particularly fashionable.
“I really feel like something work-wise, individuals have on their telephones,” Niimura says. “However there’s this pattern of scrapbooking every part — receipts for the day, the espresso cup holder, stickers. They name it ‘junk journaling.’”
Junk journaling, says Niimura, is fueling partly the sticker pattern of the second. Paper Plant sells a wide selection of stickers and likewise makes its personal — a canine, as an illustration, sporting a Dodgers hat, or a person sporting a canine as a hat. “The mini stickers are for the journalers and the planners,” Niimura says. “They’ve actually teeny-tiny ones. It’s for the calendar. You utilize a sandwich sticker for lunch with a buddy.”
The attraction of Paper Plant’s two storefronts, the place one can discover lamps formed like bread, diaries with lovable cats on the duvet and people fancy fountain pens, belies the truth that 2025 is a disturbing time for the stationery enterprise. Niimura sighs as she notes that she’s needed to increase costs this 12 months because of tariffs imposed by President Trump.
“Every little thing has sort of gone up,” Niimura says when requested how the tariffs have affected her enterprise. “If its coming from China, it’s loads. If it’s coming from Japan, it’s a bit of bit.”
And but that doesn’t deter her optimism. Niimura notes that in a approach, she’s residing out one among her childhood desires, as she as soon as envisioned her retirement life together with a gig at a stationery store.
“I all the time thought I’d do that later in life,” she says. “I believed I’d be the outdated girl placing out an indication and being behind the register.”
And now, Niimura speaks of Paper Plant and Bungu as one thing of a mission.
Chinatown’s Paper Plant Co. occupies two Chinatown storefronts, and sells every part from stickers and stationary to lamps formed like bread.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Instances)
“This analog type of issues shouldn’t die simply but,” she says. “I feel it’s vital. Creativity begins with a pencil and a paper. Now my son, too, doesn’t have a cursive class. That hurts. You’ll be able to acknowledge somebody by their handwriting. My son calls cursive ‘fancy writing,’ and I don’t need that to die.”
Consider Paper Plant and Bungu, then, as a option to hold a misplaced artwork alive.
