Big Trouble in Little Tokyo

"In South Los Angeles, Latinos are transforming historic African American neighborhoods. What is Chinatown today was once Little Italy, and Vietnamese Chinese merchants there are supplanting the longtime Cantonese.
"In largely Latino Boyle Heights, the Breed Street Shul and Otomisan Japanese restaurant are ethnic markers of a more diverse era. In the MacArthur Park area, no sooner have Central Americans organized to press for a historic ethnic designation when, they say, Koreans have begun to increase there.
"But experts say that Japanese Americans have exerted more collective community energy than most to try to influence the inexorable neighborhood changes."

Teresa Watanabe in the Los Angeles Times discusses the problems facing downtown L.A.'s Little Tokyo district

And in The New York Times Gregory Dicum spends a day in San Francisco's Japantown.