Tokyoites complain about Tokyo: its chaotic haphazardness, its sprawling largeness, its adamant refusal to be beautiful. Like the room of a teenage boy, it keeps accumulating things, things, things. Then everything is kicked under the bed and the boy goes out for a cheeseburger. Tokyoites can only shrug like his ticked-off, middle-aged parents: "Kids. What are you gonna do?"

But it's exactly this size and clutter that makes the city an ideal place to hide, chill out and reinvent oneself. Yesterday you were "Betty Blue" in some Shibuya nightclub, today you're the perfectly groomed O.L. in Marunouchi. And tomorrow, should you decide to be the cultured, enlightened housewife who has her own garbage recycling kit, then you burn your microminis and go to Nishiogikubo.

Tucked discreetly in the small niche between her more gardier sisters, Ogikubo and Kichijoji, "Nishiogi" is the Tokyo jutakugai (residential district) at its best. Conveniently close to urban Shinjuku but far enough to ensure the lack of tall buildings and an abundance of greenery. The prosperous racket around the station that fades out to an utter quiet beyond a 50-meter radius. The nostalgic coffee shops, secondhand boutiques, an array of family-owned enterprises. These all speak of the kind of money that flows here: nothing splashy or big-time, but (like the inhabitants) dependable and dignified.