Liberdade was the centre of Japanese São Paulo from the 1910s onwards, and although the diaspora has spread across the city and beyond, the neighbourhood remains the most visible expression of Japanese-Brazilian life. The red torii gates, the suzurantō lantern street lamps, and the bilingual Japanese-Portuguese shop signs are not a tourist invention; they are the neighbourhood's own. The Sunday street fair on Praça da Liberdade is the obvious draw.
The food is what most visitors come for: ramen and izakaya on Rua Galvão Bueno and Rua Tomás Gonzaga, the Japanese supermarket Yamato, the Korean and Chinese restaurants that have crept in around the edges over the last twenty years. The Museu Histórico da Imigração Japonesa on the upper floors of the Bunkyo building is one of the best ethnographic museums in São Paulo; allow an hour for the displays on the Kasato Maru immigration and the war years.