Like its specialty sushi rolls, Japantown crams a lot of awesome stuff into a tiny space. The neighborhood’s iconic Peace Pagoda towers over Japan Centre, an indoor shopping mall buzzing with activity. As an enclave of culture and entertainment, this neighbourhood hosts springtime festivals (the Cherry Blossom Festival is a traditional favourite) and nightly performances (karaoke is performance, right?). Although it's already a must-see neighbourhood for the culturally curious, Japantown’s centrality provides an added bonus. Japantown is within Western Addition/NOPA and bordered by Pacific Heights San Francisco International Airport: 26 minutes by cabGolden Gate Park: 41 minutes by public transitFisherman's Wharf: 30 minutes by public transitThe Ferry Building: 24 minutes by public transit Public transit is Easy Having a car is Possible Cultural Significance Shared with San Francisco Designed by architect Yoshiro Taniguchi and presented as a gift from Osaka, Japan, Japantown's Peace Pagoda signified more than an entrance into the city's Japanese community.

It represented a commitment to cultural exchange. The neighbourhood hopes to preserve its identity in an ever-evolving city. San Francisco is working to secure Japantown's future as the cultural and historical heart of the Japanese American community.samurai sushi menu little rock The neighbourhood is peaceful with great places to eat and a central hub to get around. sushi north york leslieCabs are always available and Japantown has many interesting places to explore."yo sushi vouchers july 2013 Japanese Pop Shops at the Neighbourhood Mallssushi online bestellen almere

Japantown's malls might not be what you're accustomed to exploring. The Kinokuniya, Kintetsu, and Miyako malls' scrunched corridors brim with Japanese specialty shops. Colours as bright as neon signs and purposely-placed pastries greet shoppers as they peruse each of the stalls.sushi to go aalborg Japantown's malls are meant for more than buying material goods.jiro dreams of sushi japanese They also serve as gathering places and full-service errand centres.jiro dreams sushi youtube And when you're looking to imagine Japan outside of San Francisco, you can do that, too. Osaka's Castle stands in miniature majesty at the Kinokuniya Mall. Airbnb works with local photographers to capture the spirit of neighbourhoods all around the world.

The photography on this page includes work by: Michael Blumenfeld is a commercial photographer based in San Francisco. When not shooting, he loves rooting for the Giants, haunting used-book stores, and following his appetite around the city. He's inspired each day by the energy and diversity of the Bay Area. This project for Airbnb was a great opportunity to tread both the beaten and unbeaten paths of a city he feels privileged to call home. Popular Places to Stay 1BR SF apt, 1 block from Fillmore Spacious & Modern Condo - Location! By Mike and Kjerstin Kiyoshi Hayakawa, quietly one of the city’s best sushi chefs, has begun making rice again and braising hamachi collar himself. Between nigiri, he has to dart back to the kitchen to set gourd-shaped cups of chawanmushi in the steamer. At his new venture in Japantown, An Japanese Restaurant, there is no one to do it for him. Hayakawa once had aspirations of turning Ace Wasabi’s into a multicity chain of rock ’n’ roll sushi restaurants.

He managed dozens of cooks and waiters at Koo, his Inner Sunset restaurant, for 11 years. Yet after a quarter century in the Bay Area, Hayakawa’s name remains unfamiliar to most of the chef watchers who could spot Dominique Crenn at 100 paces. That may change with An, which is paradoxically the most discreet project that the Bay Area sushi veteran has done — and the most ambitious. An has 16 seats and just three employees: Hayakawa; and longtime collaborator Minoru Cha. It may take first-time visitors 10 minutes to find the front door. And yet, Hayakawa has decided that San Francisco is finally ready for An. “Thirty years ago, this restaurant wouldn’t do well,” he says. He couldn’t help but notice that sushi chefs in the Bay Area, like their compatriots in Los Angeles and New York, are finally shedding their anonymity and opening jewel-box restaurants like Omakase or Kusakabe, where they offer omakase (chef’s choice) meals focused on the seasonal and the rare. In the 1990s, it took loud music and technicolor maki to entice Americans to eat sushi.

Ichi Sushi’s Tim Archuleta, who trained under Hayakawa at Tokyo Go-Go, says, “He taught me the traditional way of doing things, but at that time, it was hard to be a really traditional Japanese restaurant.” “I work for the public,” Hayakawa says of those years. However, the chef who helped popularize colorful, multi-fish rolls striped with spicy mayonnaise is now restricting himself to traditional nigiri. He’ll make the occasional tekka maki, but only for diners who know that you need to scarf it down fast enough to savor the contrast between the crackly nori and the cool, lean tuna inside. Earlier this year, hearing that longtime Sushi Ino chef Noboru Inoue was retiring, Hayakawa sold Koo and took over Inoue’s tiny space in Japantown’s Kintetsu mall, repainting the walls a buttery cream color and dimming the lights. At Koo, Hayakawa and his sushi chefs worked on an elevated platform, the nigiri handed down from on high. Although they’d exchange pleasantries and answer questions, you were always conscious that you were a few feet away from a packed dining room demanding constant slicing, patting and brushing.

At An, the tall, avuncular chef is closer to his customers, in terms of inches, and visibly more at ease. Even when he’s using his metal-tipped chopsticks to position two broiled lobster mushroom slices in a bowl, or balancing a curl of squid on a coral-colored lobe of sea urchin, he passes along dining tips from his last trip to Tokyo or asks customers he’s known since they were children how their parents are doing. The centerpiece of An’s short menu is its $80 omakase, a series of bites stretched out, like a string of temporal beads, across 90 minutes. After a few salads and cooked dishes, Hiyakawa begins setting out individual nigiri, segueing from the smooth, almost milky plushness of Japanese grouper toward Spanish mackerel, its oily flesh framed by sweetened vinegar and scallions. Each slice of fish is laid across a shallot-sized nugget of warm rice that has its own presence: not just the texture of the grains, but the flavor as well, which is fuller and warmer, as if you’d just applied a sepia filter to a black-and-white photograph.