Step back to the past

A shop on Yanaka Ginza shopping street selling traditional wooden and rope sandals.

Art and crafts

This unassuming, sometimes shabby neighborhood has been a center of the arts for centuries, and still supports both the old and new. Many traditional crafts are still practiced and can even be seen in action. "There are a lot of open workshops," says West, who also holds open studio hours where you can watch him paint. "You'll walk by the tatami maker, the silversmith, and can look into the window and see them doing that."

Only nine stores remain in all of Japan that supply the traditional pigments, ground from precious stones, that West paints with, and four of them are in Yanaka. Contemporary art galleries also exist, some in re-purposed buildings such as an old public bathhouse and a pawnshop built in 1847.

Break from the bustle

Another way that Yanaka is unlike the rest of Tokyo is that the streets are quiet at night, so it's best visited in the daytime. But this is part of its charm and another reason to come. Another Westerner who's lived here for decades, Dennis Pasche, says, "It's good for relaxing - to remove stress, to decompress."

Pasche has built a Swiss chalet in Yanaka on what he says is the highest point in Tokyo, but despite this re-creation of something of his native Switzerland, he's passionate about his adopted home.

"In Tokyo, you can find whatever you want," he says. "In Shinjuki, Roppongi, Shibuya, you find the Western world. If you are interested in the culture you need to come downtown. This is downtown. The culture remains here, alive."

Associated Press