This week, New Additions focuses on a new company who is attempting to bring the “comic’s café” industry over from Japan. Manga Cafe Mika is the first “pay to read” manga café to open in San Francisco and is located in the Japantown Center at 1737 Post Street.

In an effort to provide a service to manga readers who are tired of getting kicked around the floors of the aisles at Borders, Manga Cafe Mika offers access to a large collection of titles and charges $5 for the first hour, and $1.25 every additional fifteen minutes. Sales tax is not included in these rates.

The price might seem a little steep, but anyone who reads comics or graphic novels should know it’s considered tactless to read an entire issue without buying it.

Manga Cafe Mika is a great place to waste time while reading and to have access to more titles of collected manga than anyone besides “otaku”, who are anime super fans, could ever hope to find in one place.
One thousand of their 20,000 titles are English editions and include popular titles such as “Bleach” and “Tri-Gun”. With extensive volumes of each title, readers can catch up on any part of a story they missed, or jump around a story’s continuity to check out the different stages.

I kept it to what I like to call “anime evil” by reading a lot of “Hellsing” and “Death Note” and was introduced to the title “Monster” by Naoki Urasawa, which will hopefully have an English version film by 2009. I also jump around the Dragon Ball series to see if any of those stories actually end.

By having such a large selection to choose from, readers can inspect all genres and get a full dose of manga media. The café also has a search system, which helps readers dissect through authors and artist’s bodies of work.

I think more cafés of this nature are necessary in the shopping malls of America. It’s the perfect place for non-shoppers to take a break and sit down to look at funny books while their significant other shops.
All of the books I read had intact and un-creased spines, which makes my day. Beverages and snacks are for sale at the café, yet I didn’t see any coffee stained books.

The chairs are comfy and clean, and there is a little den area next to the window where anime is always on the screen. The café doesn’t have many items for sale yet, and children tend to bypass the café and buy their anime action figures and trading cards at Japantown Collectibles.

The staff is friendly and they know their manga. The Kikuchi family owns the store and daughter Mika Kikuchi is an accomplished actress whose voice is credited in the anime series “Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle”. The café also invites manga artists to create work in-residence.

If this industry takes off, it won’t be long before manga cafés have showers and gambling like their Japanese predecessors.

Bringing you the latest in San Francisco fine dining, New Additions travels to the Mission district to sample the south Indian Vegetarian cuisine of newly opened Udupi Palace.

Being a fan of Indian food since my first order of curry, I have grown to crave this tantalizing and spicy cuisine. My tastes have changed since the early days of going to Indian chain restaurants like Naan-N-Curry (Watch out for their location on Van Ness, the health inspector gave them a 40, one of the lowest scores in the city on the most recent inspection).

Many Indian restaurants have the same vegetarian items on their menus, which can become as stale as day-old roti, an Indian  wheat bread.

Udupi Palace offers an entire menu of vegetarian dishes, even soup and dinner combinations usually reserved for high scale Indian eateries like Gaylord and Dosa.

The samosas at Udupi Palace are filled with warm spices and tender vegetables, and the dough isn’t thick like in many other restaurants. Udupi Palace’s paneer, a cheese which does not include rennet, was fresh and delicious. Never accept tough, chalky paneer – I’ve made it myself and the process is incredibly easy.

The spice in their chana masala, a chickpea curry, was sufficient without having to specify desired hotness level – a small miracle in San Francisco. Take it easy on the Fernet Branca drinking hipsters, the production of your poison dictates the prices of saffron worldwide.

The naan is light, crispy and flavorful without interfering with the tastes of your dish. Sadly, a vegetarian vindaloo, considered to be the hottest curry, is still not available in the city.

By offering a strict vegetarian menu, Udupi Palace has found a niche in San Francisco.

Despite the huge crowds a new restaurant entertains, the service is good and the environment is considerably less Marina than you would expect.

Udupi Palace is located at 1007 1/2 Valencia Street and scored 100 percent on their most recent health inspection.

Things change quickly in San Francisco – design and legislature change, leading us in bold new directions. Neighborhoods adjust to the influx of new people and ideas, causing parts of the city to look different and unfamiliar.

In an effort to keep you excited about the city where you study, New Additions will showcase a few of Frisco’s freshest spots.

We owe it to ourselves to check out what new developments this city has to offer and integrate ourselves into the city President Taft once called, “the city that knows how.”

Potrero Del Sol Skateboard Park

Officially opened in July, San Francisco is now home to a skatepark designed by professionals with the true interests of skateboarders in mind.

Skaters are no longer limited to the ditch vert of Crocker Amazon as the only legal and approachable spot to skate in San Francisco.

The good people at Grindline, who have molded other notable parks in Oregon, such as Orcas Island, have blessed the Mission District with the concrete gem it deserves.

The Potrero park offers more flow to a “street” section than many parks in the Bay, making it a good place to find lines to keep your speed and cover the whole park.

“Groms” love the euro-gap; “Barneys” will dig the four-to-ten foot bowl with a better waterfall than the one in San Rafael, as well as a difference in vert from the park in Pacifica.

Pads are not enforced and you can always brown bag it on “Heckle Hill” in-between runs.

It’s awesome to see the older generation of skaters (over twenty-one) coming out of the city’s woodwork to collide with beginners still learning park etiquette.

Potrero del Sol Skatepark recently hosted the annual Toad and Salmon’s Chili Bowl Cook-off, making it the official skatepark of San Francisco.