The last chapter was written, and Joy Luck Chinese Restaurant closed.

Blooming forth from its Asian heritage is Sakura Japanese Restaurant. This small neighborhood spot has been brightened with a golden wash of sponge-painted walls and refreshed by the use of norens. These are traditional Japanese doorway panels that are split down the center and at Sakura lend privacy to the tatami room and visual interest to the many openings in the space. Depicting scenes of the Japanese landscape, sumo wrestlers or geishas, their simple graphics lend a pleasing Asian decor detail to Sakura. The tatami room is sunken and colorful zabuton pillows are there for your comfort. Mini paper lanterns surround the sushi bar and a tokonoma alcove displays a traditional geisha doll.

An "L-shaped" counter creates both the sushi bar for the itamae to work his rice and raw fish magic and the service area for carry-out ordering and pick up.

Sakura offers a Chinese menu of more than 100 items. There is a Chinese lunch special ($5.75) with 19 selections, a Japanese lunch menu and bento box menu with 24 combinations along with sushi, hibachi, hot pot, teriyaki, tempura and sushi entrees ranging in price from $15.95 to $150. The Love Boat ($150) is sushi served on a shiraki, which is a wooden sushi service boat.

At the time of our visit the staff was overwhelmed with a private party, the walk-in guests, the carry-out customers, and delivery.

Graciously, they informed the guests that there would be delays — "a wait." Some elected to stay; others left.

The menu at Sakura, though not ambitious, is extensive. One hundred and fifty-plus Japanese items; 117 Chinese, not including beverages, desserts (four), lunch specials and lunch combinations.

Granted that much Asian cooking is like having access to a culinary DNA that can be combined and recombined with simple building blocks such as rice, soy sauce, ginger, miso, bonito flakes and protein, it was all too much. And yet, as we found out, not enough.

In the global world we live in, it is not unusual to find Pan Asian restaurants serving the standard bearers of Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Thai foods. However, there is a structure to their menus and a harvesting of signature dishes to place on the menu.

We did not plan to have a sushi experience at Sakura. So no sushi was ordered for the purposes of this review. We were looking for a traditional Japanese meal. One that has much in common with the American South — ichiju sansai — "soup plus three" and includes soup, rice, a meat and a vegetable.

They were out of our first two appetizer choices. However, Wasabi Shumai ($6.25) caught our attention with their "wasabi skin" wrapper. Our server thought this to be the "skin" of the wasabi root but rather it was a dumpling wrapper (called skin in many Asian groceries and cookbooks) flavored with wasabi. Keep it in mind for cold season. The wasabi extract cleared your sinuses but left no residual heat on your taste buds. The pork filling, seasoned with onions and water chestnuts, was a delicate foil to the wasabi's potent heat. Dunked into umami-rich soy sauce, it was very tasty.

Looking for a contrast to the soft, steamed dumplings, we ordered the Haru maki ($3.75), crisped spring roll wrappers filled with a bland and lifeless vegetable combination. Unremarkable.

The Hot Pot selections are accompanied by a salad and feature a side of tempura or a side of seafood or vegetables.

It seemed like a good choice to explore both tempura and noodles at Sakura.

Shrimp Tempura Hot Pot ($15.25) featured a generous bowl of broth topped with portly udon noodles, carrots looking like they were cut with pinking shears, green broccoli florets, V-shaped shards of celery and a side of vegetable and shrimp tempura. The sturdy but slippery udon noodles were worthy of slurping and the vegetables, though looking past their prime, had no off flavors.

The tempura, however, had one shrimp that was cloaked in tempura batter and another enrobed like shrimp katsu with a thick crust of panko bread crumbs.

The vegetables — potato, yam and broccoli — spoke to winter and not the wonderful vegetable variety available in this high season of fresh and local. The tempura batter lacked the crisp shimmer of the rice-flour veil that makes this dish special. This portion, however, is huge and can easily feed two. The salad never appeared.

The hibachi entrees are not prepared table side but served from the kitchen. Here, Sakura flowered. You can select from chicken, beef or seafood or any number of combination dinners. The Filet Mignon and Shrimp ($20) were generous in all of the portions from the fried rice, to the shrimp, to the beef. Tender morsels of filet mignon were charred with the flavor of the grill. Small but tender shrimp and nicely seasoned fried rice were accompanied by summer squash, onion strips and zucchini. However, the soup, the salad and the hibachi shrimp — all part of this hibachi entree — never appeared.

With the pace of the kitchen and the quantity of the food, they were not missed.

I am confident Sakura would have boxed them up to go but waiting was no longer an option.

We were looking for sukiyaki, shabu-shabu, and the somen noodles of summer. We were searching for a Japanese restaurant with the building blocks of her cuisine from sashimi and sushi; to yakimono and nimono; from agemono, to nabemono. The gohan was a given, but we searched for menrui and tsukemono. The search continues.

Desserts celebrate the Japanese palate with green tea, ginger and red bean ice cream ($3.50); mochi (rice paste filled with ice cream) ($2.50) in green tea, red bean and vanilla flavors; and banana and ice cream tempura.

Japanese beers and sake are available.

Sakura is the kind of restaurant you want to be your neighborhood habit. Is the Chinese menu just a passing distraction? Is Sakura waiting to rise from the ashes of its former Chinese combination platters and flower like its cherry blossom namesake into the refinements of Japanese cooking?

That is our hope.