I was wandering through Chinatown in Yokohama the other day to kill some time, and a thought occurred to me. This has to be the cleanest, and most expensive, Chinatown in the world.
As an example, a nice lady with a stand in front of one of the many elegant restaurants was selling lychees, which I happen to really like, at the "bargain" price of Yen 3,150 for 30 lychees. That works out to about US$25.50, or 85 cents per lychee.
Yikes! You can get a whole pile of them in many places in Southeast Asia for that price. Needless to say, I passed on that particular bargain.
And of course, the plush, clean interior decor of the restaurants, including the one I went into, seemed somewhat out of sync with the status quo of other Chinatowns around the world I've been to.