I paid attention first to Nishiki (American Eagle) on the Left Coast in my ill-spent youth but there certainly WERE Fujis present, the first I noticed them were in some SF shops, notably on Fulton St. and then on Stanyan. My impression was they seemed "conservative" but clearly had made a big play with the shop owners cause they were quite prevalent before a lot of the other "good" Japanese makes showed up. When Univega was strong a bunch of the bike snobs (I knew some by then) gave them high praise but I admit to thinking they were some weirdo marketing gimmick to amp-up the Italvega brand. (I was pretty dense, maybe still can be!)