Kudos Restaurant is located in an old wooden house covered with vines on a small street in a small town in Vancouver, where I least expect to find a Japanese restaurant. Very good meal, the waiter and the cook (I think they are also owners) are very affable and generous (serving us more than one dish in the house). . .

And Maneki Neko appears everywhere.

It was not until after dinner that we strolled around the block, we encountered a mural and signed it and realized that we were passing through a place that used to be a small but prosperous Japantown.

Before World War II, the small saw town of Chemainus city on Vancouver Island had a Japanese community of about 300 people. During the war, Japanese Canadians were transferred to internment camps (losing their homes and businesses), and many did not return later. Chemainus fell into hard times in the early 1980s when its factory closed, but turned itself into a tourist destination as a town of outdoor murals. Despite the few relics of the original Japanese community, it is remembered in one of these murals.

The owners of Kudos restaurant (9875 Maple St –around the corner from the Hospital auxiliary thrift store in the lower part of Chemainus) immigrated from Japan a decade or so ago, and are part of a new community, which depends less on natural resource industries (though the mill has reopened) and more on arts, culture and tourism, (the town is now known for its murals, eclectic shops, and live theatre).

Cre: Lucky Cat – Maneki Neko