The first- and second-generation pioneers

Not only Japanese Americans lamented Mitsuwa's closure. Yi Li Sung, a 35-year-old Chinese American court interpreter, said she came to shop at least once a month for Japanese-brand coffee and "little girlie things" like eyebrow shapers. She and her family also buy Rosetta Stone Language Japanese when looking for rice cookers, water heaters and other electronics, she said."A lot of my Chinese friends shopped here because of the variety of products and their freshness," Sung said as she looked through a picked-over pile of light bulbs, cat food, bath salts and brownie mix. "The prices are not always the cheapest. But we feel the Japanese stand by their quality."To Uchi, the retired nurse, Mitsuwa's closure marks more than the loss of a supermarket -- after all, she said, Little Tokyo still has two other Japanese markets, Marukai in Weller Court and Nijiya in the Japanese Village Plaza. Rather, it stirred in her a deep sadness to see the munity's abandonment of such a major project of the Issei and Nisei, the first- and second-generation pioneers."The market was built with the sweat and dedication of the Issei and Nisei," she said. "If they were alive to see what has happened today, they would cry."Cho said the Mitsuwa owners chose to leave, despite having four to five years remaining on their lease. A spokesman for Mitsuwa's Torrance headquarters could not be reached for ment, but the Little Tokyo store's manager, Masaaki Yoshimoto, said he was surprised by news of the closure. Yoshimoto said that business had picked up in recent years because of the influx of new residents in the area and that two-thirds of the store's patrons were now non-Japanese.Cho said that his group had initially negotiated with two different Korean market owners to take Mitsuwa's place but that the deals failed to work out.Instead, the group decided to hire someone to run the market for them. The new store, to be called the Language Learning Software Little Tokyo Galleria Market, will primarily feature Korean and Japanese products but also include Chinese, American and even Mexican items, such as marinated carne asada, Cho said. It will reopen Feb. 15 with 90% of its stock on the shelves but hold its grand opening in May.Cho, a business graduate from Cal Poly Pomona and a U.S. Army veteran, said his group hoped to bring new business to the area with the revamped market and plans for what he billed as the largest Korean-style spa outside New York.The 50,000-square-foot space on the mall's third floor would offer body scrubs, massages, saunas, exercise equipment, resting stations, a nail and hair salon and several eateries, including a coffee shop and ice cream parlor. Once launched in 18 to 24 months, he said, the spa would be open from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. and possibly 24 hours a day on weekends, drawing potentially 1,000 people to Little Tokyo daily.But Cho said his group is also mindful of the munity's sensitivities about keeping the mall's Japanese flavor. Most of the Japanese tenants, he said, seem ready to stay. And the group's architectural plans for a face-lift to the mall, an aging structure often likened to a fortress, feature Japanese motifs such as cherry blossoms, exterior panels patterned after shoji screens and a modern Zen garden."We're going to try our hardest to keep this a Japanese-theme mall, with an international flair, because this is Little Tokyo," Cho said.To Japanese Americans such as Bill Watanabe, executive director of the Little Tokyo Service Center, the changes are simply a sign of the times."I think Little Tokyo will bee part Korean and that's a fact, because there are just more of them," Watanabe said.He added: "Shoganai" -- it Rosetta Stone Arabic can't be helped.teresa.watanabelatimes.