Temple gates and Western-style buildings stand along the same street. Jōsai in Tsuyama is a district where a temple quarter and a merchant quarter overlap on the west side of the castle, with temples running one after another down the road. Castle towns as a rule placed their temples together outside the castle proper, so the temples came first here, and the merchant houses filled in the gaps between them afterwards.

Mixed among them are Western-style buildings from the Meiji period onward — a church, a former clinic — so a single street carries structures separated by centuries standing side by side without any transition between them. Jōsai was designated an Important Preservation District in December 2020, seven years after the district on the other side of the castle and for noticeably different reasons. Tsuyama station is within walking distance, everyday facilities are close, and journeys toward Tottori or Okayama are made by car, which is the ordinary pattern for a regional city of this size.

When temples and shops occupy one street, their busy days do not coincide. The days when people come to worship and the days when trade is heaviest fall differently, so the crowding along the street varies according to the calendar, and a weekday and a weekend produce visibly different streets. Jōtō, on the other side of the castle, has a completely different character again — one continuous commercial frontage, built to one logic, with no interruptions in it. Walking the two districts in succession within an hour, it is genuinely hard to believe they belong to the same small city.