Little Tokyo, Los Angeles
At b.glen, we want to be a brand that brings something good to the community and to society through the work we do, and we take part in a range of support activities. This time we made a product donation in California, where our head office is based. The recipient was the Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC), a nonprofit that works out of Little Tokyo in Los Angeles.
It started at a Japanese community festival this past summer. We met Mrs. Ryoko Nakamura at the LTSC booth and heard about their work, and that conversation led to this donation.
What is the Little Tokyo Service Center?
LTSC was founded in Little Tokyo in 1980 by Japanese American activists. It reaches roughly 10,000 people a year — Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals, along with Asian and low-income residents of the surrounding neighborhoods. Its work includes social services for local residents, housing support for low-income households, and running the Terasaki Budokan, a facility open to every generation. For more than 40 years it has stayed close to the community it serves.
What we’ve learned
At the LTSC office in Little Tokyo
Nakamura-san, who serves as Community Engagement & Education Manager at LTSC, she told us the people they support are split roughly evenly between men and women overall — but in senior services, around 80% are women.
What stayed with us was the way she described self-care. Depending on the culture, “taking care of yourself” can be read as selfishness. Some people treat endurance as a virtue and end up putting themselves last.
She gave the example of the oxygen mask on an airplane. You put your own mask on first, then help the person beside you. It works the same way in life: staying healthy in body and mind is what gives you the strength to support someone else.
Putting yourself last because you care about others
Terasaki Budokan
In Japanese American and Japanese households in the US, differences in values can show up between generations. The parents’ generation value “we’re family, of course we support each other.” The generation raised in America thinks more in terms of “helping within what I can manage as an individual.” The care for family is the same, but the difference in cultural background can create friction.
When LTSC supported people affected by the large wildfires near Los Angeles early 2025, she said many who had suffered serious losses themselves held back from asking for help, saying “there are people worse off than me.”
LTSC’s annual report carries a voice from one of those survivors: “At first, I didn’t think I could accept this support. But community is important. The support from LTSC taught us that no one has to face hardship alone.”
Because they care about family and the people around them, they put themselves last. Listening to Nakamura-san, we began to see that shared thread.
At the same time, there are moments where generations connect. At Terasaki Budokan, she told us, you can see a grandfather who once played in the Japanese American basketball leagues, his son, and his granddaughter — just turned one — all spending time on the same court. There is friction, and there is also a place that ties generations together. Both are part of what LTSC supports.
We wanted to deliver a moment of self-care
Dr. Keller Power Eyelash Serum
b.glen Body Perfection Gel
After these conversations, we donated two products: an eyelash serum and a body care gel.
We chose them because they are easy to use on their own and simple to work into a day, and because they offer something a little different from a basic daily routine — a slightly special moment of self-care. The people this donation reaches are those who have steadied the foundations of daily life, food and clothing and a place to live, and are now taking a step toward something new. That is exactly why we wanted to deliver something beyond the bare minimum: something that could give a push to the feeling of “this one is for me.”
On July 29, b.glen staff visited the LTSC office in Little Tokyo and handed the products over in person. In an email from Nakamura-san afterward, staff shared that they “could picture the smiles on our clients’ faces” and that it would be “a moment of relief.” They passed the products along to their clients right away.
What we can do from here, as a cosmetics company
What this visit to LTSC brought home to us again is that the barrier to taking care of yourself is different depending on culture and circumstance. b.glen is a brand that has carried the careful approach to skincare particular to Japan out into the world, from its base in California.
“Born in California, Rooted in Japan”
For us, having grown up between two cultures, there is something that overlaps in the Japanese American and Japanese community LTSC supports. Self-care, skincare included, is the kind of thing that gets pushed to the back of the line. Which is why delivering even a small amount of time to take care of yourself might be one of the forms of support we are able to give.
b.glen will keep looking for the shape that only we can offer, and keep supporting our community and the society around us.
About Little Tokyo Service Center
LTSC supports the daily lives of people living in and around Little Tokyo in Los Angeles. You can read more about their work and their history on their official website.
Little Tokyo Service Center — Official site: www.LTSC.org
