When Friedia Niimura moved to the United States from Japan in the mid -20 years, she shared a dream with many angels: act or perhaps fashion. A personality of TV and media in Japan seemed a natural adjustment, only that it did not take the competitive rhythm of Los Angeles.
Then she immersed himself in one of her other passions: paper.
“When I arrived at Los Angeles, I noticed that there were not many special stationery boutiques,” says Niimura. “When you are in Japan, they are everywhere and you are considered.
Friedia Niimura outside its store Paper Plant Co., which occupies two Chinatown showcases and shares a space with thanks coffee. Niimura spent his adolescence in Japan before changing his career.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Niimura created a place where one can do exactly that. Chinatown's Paper Plant Co. is its advanced stationery, made of two small shop windows that share a space with thanks coffee and have outdoor seats. A community destination since 2020, the store has earned a reputation of specializing in notebooks, stickers and pen of Japan. Or, as niimura describes the aesthetics of the paper plant: “cute.”
“When we choose something and we all go, 'Oh, my God, it's so nice', then we know that it will work really well,” says Niimura, 45. “I don't know how in Japan they always come up with beautiful scenarios and beautiful scenes and beautiful gestures. It is almost as if there was a school on how to draw dogs doing beautiful things, cats doing beautiful things.”
The paper plant from October 11 to 12 will be the host of Bungu la, which is believed to be the first adequate stationery festival in the city. Niimura has selected by hand the more or less 60 exhibitors of Bungu, with the vast majority of them traveling here from Japan. Bungu is inspired by events similar to those that Niimura has gone in Tokyo or New York. The paper plant, for example, exhibited last year at a festival organized by the Brooklyn Yoseka stationery.
“There was a line every day,” says Niimura, describing the New York Fest. “I was just the manager of my store and I, and we thought: 'How does it not have one?' And then who would do it?
Like most things related to the paper plant, Niimura has been discovering it on the march. The paper plant, for example, was initially financed almost completely by credit cards, a business plan that Niimura would not recommend to others. Bungu will take care of a lobby at the Center Union station, and hope is to turn it into an annual event. The objective for the first year is to simply reach the equilibrium point, since Niimura jokes saying that it still does not know the final cost of organizing a festival.
“We also had to rent a frontal sidewalk, which were another $ 10,000 that had not added to the budget,” says Niimura.
The answer, however, has been overwhelmingly positive. Popular Japanese companies such as Hobonichi will attend, but Niimura says that he made an effort to assure vendors that they had never been sold in the $ 25 of 25 tickets, for which he has exhausted about 1,500 per day. However, there will be tickets for walking every day of the show. Niimura hopes to attract 2,500 people per day.
The stickers, says the owner of Paper Plant Co., Friedia Niimura, are very popular at this time. (Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Paper Plant Co. makes and sells original greeting cards. (Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Niimura itself is still discovering new joys in the world of stationery. She points out that she has recently fallen in love with the source pens.
“In Japan, the source pens are oriented to older gentlemen,” she says. “And they are expensive. The really pleasant can be thousands of dollars. We have those who are a couple of hundreds, but also for beginners for around $ 20. I started with those, but recently I got a couple of hundreds of dollars, and it is the life that changes the way the ink is so soft. Once it has one, it is difficult to return to a regular pen.”
As part of Bungu, Niimura is encouraging attendees to explore the public transport of Los Angeles and the ability to walk from Chinatown. The maps will be delivered in Bungu for which guests can collect three stamps, one in the event, one at the Chinatown Metro railway station and another in the paper plant. Those who complete the Mini Caster Hunt will receive a free gift in Paper Plant, which Niimura maintains a secret.
With the increase in Collage workshops and Zine's manufacturing, younger generations connect with paper and niimura points out that one day planners and today's cuts albums have become especially popular.
“I feel that anything about work, people have on their phones,” says Niimura. “But there is this trend of cuts of cuts: receipts for the day, the support of the coffee cup, the stickers. They call it 'garbage newspaper'.”
Junk Journaling, says Niimura, is partially feeding the tendency of the label of the moment. Paper Plant sells a wide range of stickers and also does his own: a dog, for example, with a dodgers hat or a man with a dog like a hat. “The mini stickers are for newspapers and planners,” says Niimura. “They have very small. It is for the calendar. You use a sandwich sticker for lunch with a friend.”
The charm of the two sprains of Paper Plant, where one can find bread -shaped lamps, newspapers with adorable cats on the deck and those elegant pen, denies the fact that 2025 is a stressful moment for the stationery business. Niimura sighs while noting that it has had to increase prices this year due to tariffs imposed by President Trump.
“Everything has increased a bit,” says Niimura when asked how tariffs have affected their business. “If it comes from China, it's a lot. If you come from Japan, it's a bit.”
And yet that does not deter its optimism. Niimura points out that in a way, he is living one of his childhood dreams, since he once imagined his retirement life, including a concert in a stationery.
“I always thought I would do this later in life,” she says. “I thought it would be the old woman taking out a signal and be behind the record.”
And now, Niimura speaks of paper and Bungu plants as a mission.
Chinatown's Paper Plant Co. occupies two chinatown showcases and sells everything, from stickers and stationary to bread -shaped lamps.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
“This analog style of things should not die yet,” she says. “I think it's important. Creativity begins with a pencil and paper. Now my son does not have a italic class. That hurts. You can recognize someone through his handwriting. My son calls italics 'elegant writing', and I don't want him to die.”
Think of the paper plant and the Bungu, then, as a way to keep a lost art alive.
