skatta

’if i moved to japan’ was a thought that occurred to me already on the following day after arrival.

On my last night in Fukuoka, I swallowed my pride and googled where the local street food – the yatai stalls were located. Turns out I had narrowly missed them on my first night as I had passed just nearby on the lookout for food on my first night out.

The canalside on the southern tip of Nakasu island is lined with food carts rolled in in the afternoon and open until late at night. By the time I had finished work at ten, the stalls were all quite full with queues of different sizes huddled against the canal railing waiting to be next up.

I walked the length of the canal back and forth, and then settled to queue for one of the ones with a blue sign on top of it, some pictures of the ramen and yakitori they sold. I tried to eye out my new favourite drink in Japan, the non-alcoholic asahi dry zero, but they mostly only had small taps of regular asahi, kirin or sapporo on the drink shelves next to the stalls.

The stalls were all almost identical – a kitchen in the middle, and stalls on three edges of the cooking area, with stools very close to each other. The vibe was very intimate, I immediately fell in love with the concept. People of every age, and some stalls seemed to be especially popular with youngsters and groups of high-school or uni friends.

I was approached by the usher of the stall I was queuing, who spoke good english. I tried to answer in as much japanese as I had picked up. they made sure I understood I can only order all the food I wanted at once. I settled on some yakitori skewers and a local hakata ramen with pork.

Very soon a space freed for me to sit, and I greeted my neighbours and the two very trendy-looking cooks.

I heard one of them say ’yakitori des, skatta des’. I got my first order almost immediately, and a tin glass of cold green tea.

I had brought along a yellow beanie with the name of my district in local slang ’skatta’ (from skattudden, or Juniper Point), that was launched by the local super market chain alepa. It’s become a trademark of sorts for me, as I had it on for most of the Musica nova festival a few weeks ago. Someone on the arcade street had shouted ’ok, pikachu’ at me, referring to the yellow of the beanie.

When I walked back to my room from the library yesterday, I saw that I had lost it. I mustve had left it in one of the toilets I had gone to.

As it happened, the one thing I had lost so far was also the one thing I had two identical copies of.

So I had a brand new skatta-beanie on when I sat on the yatai stall.

yakitori des, skatta des.

Walking downtown to check out the Daymon-neighbourhood, boded to be trendy by the guide-book I had, I bumped into another traveller on their own, looking for some food. I had seen them also at the yatai stalls. They seemed like fun and good company at a glance, so I ran after them, apologised for running after them and then asked if they wanted to go for a drink with me. Since I was traveling alone, and I didn’t speak Japanese, it would be nice to talk to someone.

They agreed, and we went back to the stalls for a drink and some more food.

Turns out they were an astrophysics student from Poland studying in Tokyo, the best university in the field according to them. They were on a so-far very successful hitch-hiking trip all around Kyushu. They spoke impeccable Japanese, which they said was very useful as most people who offered a ride were also very talkative. This I had found on my hitch-hiking trips in Finland some years ago too. We both enjoyed languages and films, so we had a lot in common. we sat bar-hopping until three in the morning.

I had to check out by eleven in the morning. I paid a small visit to the nearby shrine, and then headed to the Shinkasen Hakata Station to exchange my rail pass. It took almost an hour of queuing, but I made it to my connection to Kagoshima, the port city servicing the island of Yakushima.

I walked across town to the port, took an incredibly fast hydrofoil ferry to the town of Anbo on the eastern side of Yakushima.

I bumped into a Japanese family on their way to a hotel in the southern shore and offered them Moomin biscuits. The grandmother of the family showed me pictures of the Uspenski cathedral from Helsinki, and I said I live about 200metres from there. They had been there last summer.

Too early to feel home-sick.

The kid of the family gave me a small pack of Yokohama mix salt snacks in return.

I found a Ramen joint open in an otherwise quiet little coastal town on a Sunday night. Delicious, cheap and quick, I took the opportunity to charge my phone before heading out.

I hiked for just under an hour to the Yakusugi Museum parking ground, from where a bus will leave to the trailhead heading to the central plateau of the island at 5am in the morning. I’ll be first in line.

Free tenting is prohibited in Japan, so I’m hoping to clear my village before anyone notices…