New Delhi, Aug. 9 -- While slurping a steaming bowl of miso ramen sitting in the shadow of a pagoda, and contemplating whether to get mochi or matcha next, we could well be in a Tokyo alley. And even though the surrounding sights, scents, and signboards may have us believe so, we are, in fact, over 8000 kilometres away on another continent.

This is San Francisco's Japantown, the oldest and largest of only three such quarters remaining in the United States. On a walk through the neighbourhood, we learn that Japanese immigration to North America gained momentum in the late 1800s, with this enclave in California's 'Golden City' soon becoming amongst the largest outside Japan. By 1940, Nihonjin-machi, as this thriving vicinity was called, bo...