Bellevue Uwajimaya Opens in New Location

BELLEVUE -- The first few hours of the opening of the new Bellevue store was busy and buzzing.

After a week of moving across town from the old store near the Crossroads and Overlake neighborhoods, Uwajimaya was open in its new location at 669 120th Ave. NE, just east of Interstate 405. The location used to be the site of a Larry's Market and, most recently, a G.I. Joe's sporting goods store.

Friday was the "soft" opening of the store, and the grand opening will be Wednesday April 13, said store director Hiroshi Hibi, with a celebration at the store on Saturday April 16.

"The old store was very old and tattered and it needed a lot of TLC to serve the customers on the Eastside," Hibi said. "This is a showcase store," Hibi said.

Uwajimaya had been in its old location in east Bellevue for more than 25 years, on 15555 NE 24th St. East Bellevue still is served one other large Asian grocery store, at 14509 NE 20th St.

Customer Cheng Yang, of Bellevue, dropped by on Friday to check out the new location. Though the new location is about five minutes further away from his home than the old location, Yang thought the new store was a good move for Uwajimaya.

"It's much larger and the location is closer to downtown, and across from ," he said. "It's the right move for" Uwajimaya.

"The layout is much better," he added. "The old one was... shabbier."

The new store features many of the same departments as the old store, but in a much larger and better lit area, Hibi said. The store includes live seafood displays, a pan-Asian deli counter, a gift shop and kitchen appliance shop, and a Shiseido beauty products counter. The store also features new sashimi and sushi displays and a larger eating area than the old store.

Along with Asian groceries, such as durian fruit and a wide selection of sauces from different Asian countries, the store also features mainstream American groceries.

"As people got immersed into Asian culture, it's become more mainstream," Hibi said. "Our customers are everybody; it's very mixed."

The new store is 35,000 square feet, which is 75 percent larger the 20,000 square feet in its old location, where the store had been for more than 25 years.

The company's founders started businesses as a Tacoma-based grocery delivery service specializing in Japanese goods started in 1928 by Fujimatsu and Sadako Moriguchi. Fujimatsu Moriguchi would deliver imported goods to the native-Japanese millworkers and other laborers throughout Western Washington.

That business ended during World War II, when the Moriguchis and their children were sent to an internment camp in California.

When the Moriguchis returned, they opened the first Uwajimaya store in Seattle in 1946. The store is named after Uwajima, the Japanese fishing community where the Moriguchis traced their roots. Today, Uwajimaya sells grocery products from different Asian countries and the U.S. There are four locations -- the flagship store at Uwajimaya Village in Seattle's International District, Bellevue, Renton and Beaverton, Ore.