Uoki K. Sakai was the oldest grocery store in San Francisco’s Japantown when it closed at the end of 2011. It was last run by third-generation owner, Robert Sakai, whose grandfather Kitaichi Sakai arrived from Japan in the 1890s as a cook and fish peddler selling wares from a horse and buggy. After the 1906 earthquake, he purchased a building and began selling fresh fish and imported Japanese food items.
