We're way past sushi

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 "Saigo no Iiwake" 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 shin issei, or "new first generation" who immigrated after World War II, are losing their traditionalist grip on the culture.

IN their stead has come a new generation, many of them young students in their 20s straight from Japan, and they represent modern Japan. Like Tokyo, they are metropolitan and sophisticated, westernized and hungry. As rents in the area go through the roof, their numbers seem to increase, especially the young women -- no longer as funky-chic as in days past, with the bleached blond hair and spray-on tans or the platform boots and micro-minis. Nowadays, most of them are poured into skin-tight booty jeans and boots like everyone else in town.

They join sidewalks full of young people of other ethnicities -- lots of Chinese, lots of Koreans, a smattering of Latinos who've always lived in the area -- and funky hipsters from UCLA and the Westside looking for kicks, as well as serious foodies drifting down out of Pacific Palisades and Brentwood. In their wake come changes -- trendy, internationalist and mostly upscale.

At the corner of Sawtelle and LaGrange, a once-struggling cluster of shops has been reborn over the last two years as one of the Westside's hottest dining destinations. Diners in their 30s and 40s crowd the patio outside Orris, a French-Japanese izakaya, a pub-style restaurant offering small plates like tapas, waiting for a table. Mizu 212 features shabu-shabu, in which diners cook their food in boiling water, a kind of twist on Korean barbecue. Mizu 212's neighbor, the 5-month-old ramen hot spot Chabuya, is similarly stacked, with lots of overflow to Sushi Tenn and the little Ketchy II hamburger stand.