We're way past sushi

THE twentysomething Japanese man on the tiny stage at Karaoke Bleu is proving that Friday night sounds good in any language, delivering a smooth version of Kyu Sakamoto's old-school Japanese hit "\o7Ue o Muite \f7\o7Aruko\f7" to an appreciative audience. Dressed in Hollywood casual -- dark pants, light blue shirt, short hair well-coiffed -- he rejoins his table to a round of backslapping, and even those who don't speak Japanese raise a toast from the bar. Asked if the singer is a regular, one of the other men at the bar says, "I don't know, but can you sing that in Japanese?"

A big table of loud and half-sozzled young white women give a sincere cheer, then dispatch a trio of their own to pile onstage and destroy a Destiny's Child chestnut, cracking up as they wail, "Say my name, say my name ..."

It's another jammed weekend night at one of the best-loved clubs on a three-block stretch of Sawtelle Boulevard in West L.A., and the scene at Karaoke Bleu is indicative of the area's multicultural appeal. As the waitresses take song request tickets and quickly usher singers onstage, the sounds of popular Japanese songs such as Hideaki Tokunaga's "\o7Saigo no Iiwake\f7" mingle with sorority sisters doing Snoop Dogg, followed by a Korean American singing Bon Jovi. Connected by a restroom with the perennially crowded Japanese pub FuRaiBo -- both hot spots are run by the same company -- Karaoke Bleu goes beyond the traditional Japanese culture that once dominated the street, and even the Pan-Asian culture that is replacing it. It is a stark example of the rapid and ongoing mutation that is transforming the area into a kind of pan-exotic entertainment zone, an Asian-based strip of food, pop culture, art and clothing that is thronged by Westsiders ever-hungry for something new.

Sawtelle is sometimes called Little Osaka and is still deeply Japanese, with its nurseries and Buddhist temples and boba tea shops, but it is experiencing what many are calling a third phase in its identity. The issei who immigrated to the U.S. after the turn of the 20th century, when the area was mostly celery fields, are giving up their old shops, and the \o7shin issei, \f7or "new first generation" who immigrated after World War II, are losing their traditionalist grip on the culture.