Seattle's International District is one of the few neighbourhoods in the United States where Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Vietnamese communities all share the same blocks, a result of the city's particular immigration history and the forced internment of Japanese Americans in 1942 which left their neighbourhood intact for other communities to fill. The result is a genuinely layered place rather than a sanitised tourist district.
Walk in from King Street Station along King or Jackson Street. The Uwajimaya grocery is the neighbourhood anchor — a large Japanese supermarket with a food court and a branch of Kinokuniya bookshop upstairs. The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience (719 S. King St.) is excellent: a community-curated museum that deals honestly with discrimination, immigration, and identity. For food, the noodle shops and dim sum restaurants along King and Jackson are the reason locals come.