Vancouver’s strong connection with Japan dates to the late i8oos, when Japanese men came over to work in the lumber industry. And before World War II, during which thousands of Japanese-Canadians were forcibly relocated to other parts of BC and Canada, the com¬munity’s base was Powell Street. It’s still a peculiarly charming, if hopelessly rundown, thoroughfare in the Downtown Eastside, not far from the waterfront.
Today the area around Powell Street and Oppenheimer Park is beset with drug problems, and virtually all Japanese-Canadians live else¬where in the city. But small signs of a Japanese presence remain — here and there a shop, restaurant, or Buddhist temple. There’s also the Japanese Hall (475 Alexander Street, East Vancouver, 604-254-2551). This delightful white-plaster building, with its arched window frames and black-tile trim, was built in 1928 as a Japanese-language school. In recent years, the local Japanese community has built a somewhat overbearing addition with the same mandate.
Japanese tourists have long liked Vancouver, if mostly for its relative safety and cleanliness, and proximity to nature, skiing, and the Canadian Rockies. Many Japanese English-language students choose it over myriad other English-teaching destinations. They tend to live with families on the North Shore or in apartments in the West End. And while a pocket in the vicinity of Alberni Street and Burrard Street has been dubbed Little Tokyo for its tourist-related businesses, penny-pinching students tend to fre4uent restaurants and stores along westerly Robson Street and Denman Street. A purveyor of all things hip (to Japanese youth) is Kawabata-Ya (437 West Hastings Street, Downtown, 604-806-0026). Here you’ll find little frilly frocks and lots of designer jeans and black T-shirts.
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