Fukuoka’s makeshift foodstalls are a distinct part of the city’s atmosphere. The cluster of yatai stalls set up every evening along the river bank at the southern end of Nakasu Island is especially popular with locals and a preferred night-time destination for tourists. With their weathered lanterns and glowing signs, their rickety frames, translucent plastic tarpaulins and diffused light, the tiny eateries, each packed with a half dozen or so customers supping on ramen, oden or yakitori, look to have come from another time, and I imagine both rationed revelries under the curfew of a wartime past and repurposed makeshift eateries catering to inhabitants of some dystopian future.

JANUARY, 2016