The last time Little Tokyo tried getting back to its Japanese roots, it was in the early 1980s with the Japanese Village Plaza, a warren of sweets shops, tea stands and trinket stores under sloping glazed-tile roofs.
Now, on the eve of the area's most ambitious development project in decades, the historically Japanese enclave in Los Angeles has something different in mind: trendy boutiques and stylish apartments enclosed in sleek mid-rise towers.
As Little Tokyo's ethnic vibes change with newcomers filling new housing, neighborhood leaders are making a bid to lure hip young Japanese-Americans back to the neighborhood with the $300 million Nikkei Center, a sprawling complex of apartments, shops and public gardens being built on the area's last major undeveloped parcel.