We decided to visit the main MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), which is just down the street from Little Tokyo.

We parked across the street from the Disney Concert Hall, which was designed by Frank Gehry, who designed the Millenium Park Pavilion in Chicago.  The building is really neat but slightly out of place among the more, well, normal architecture surrounding it.  Unfortunately, the last tour of the interior had already left, so we had to satisfy ourselves with shopping at their gift shop, where we bought a book and CD about the huge concert hall organ inside; we’ll have to take the tour if only to see the organ.  And there’s a Kodo drummers show coming up – one thing I like about LA is that almost all acts come through town.

The sign for the Disney Concert Hall

The facade of the Concert Hall

A detail of the facade

We then walked down to MOCA.  There are three museums for MOCA; we’ve visited the one at The Pacific Design Center, and the Geffen is just down the street from the one we visited today on Grand.  The current exhibit is Marlene Dumas, “Measuring Your Own Grave”.  Ms Dumas is a Dutch artist.

The MOCA facade

Marlene Dumas, “Measuring the Grave,”  Oil on Canvas, 2003

We then drove over to Little Tokyo.  I just love shopping in the anime shops.  There’s also a really good bookstore, Kinokuniya at 123 Astronaut E. Onizuka Strett, which has a store in New York City.  I bought two books about Yotsuba&! (volumes 2 and 4) and another Star Trek manga title.  As usual, I bought a few anime and manga figures as well; I went ahead and bought a figure of Yotsuba from Yotsuba&!; I already have a companion figure of the cardboard robot (they had the original, non-Amazon one, but I decided to pass this time).

This is Barong, a Balinese creature of positive forces in the universe, a very cool figure I found

A figure of Yotsuba, from volume 2 of Yotsuba&!, a manga series

We had dinner at a noodle shop in the same mall as the bookstore; the food was fresh and good.