My family is spending our last two nights in Japan in a city, having lost ourselves to the vastness of Kyushu's volcanoes, mountains and rural towns over the past week and a half. It takes some reminding, but there are actual street lamps now, actual inner city train systems and actual youngsters with glasses too big for their faces, iPhone 8s in one hand and overpriced coffee in the other.
There is something to be said about Christmas in cities across the world, something about it all being the same, even when there are thousands of ways to say "Merry Christmas". Malls try to outdo one another with their trees but none shall be grander than the big ass one in the city centre. Shops slash prices. Supermarkets play those more than likeable Yuletide tunes. People wish one another, back and forth. There's a familiar feeling in the air, a collective and albeit unspoken recognition that the year is fast drawing to a close and maybe this - like all endings supposedly ought to - calls for celebration.
In larger countries, humans get in touch with their inner animal and also begin The Great Migration. On the streets of this city we are in, people lug luggage across streets and into cross-country trains, buses, and ferries which will see them into the countryside. To have come to the city for work is to leave a lifestyle and a community. To then go home to people who keep your name tucked under their tongues is to learn that there is probably nothing quite like it.
Tonight is our final night here, and we are at an izakaya - one of those cramped little restaurants serving skewered foods. This one appears to be a family business; the greying man working the grill is flanked by a lady, and two servers bear a striking resemblance to the both of them. For the first time since we've been in this city, there aren't any other tourists eating here. In fact, the street that this izakaya is on was not particularly quiet, but occupied by only locals. The table beside us seats a family of six - grandparents retired, parents rosy, kids rambunctious. It is a Japanese custom for families to have fried chicken on Christmas Eve, and, sure enough, they share a plate of crisp, blistering Hakata chicken. Above the squeals of mischief and sizzles on the grill, a radio station playing Japanese pop triumphs over the speakers and a guy at the table for two behind me pipes along; he seems to know the lyrics to every single song that station puts out. "Eve" has its origins in the Hebrew word for "life." This is very much a snapshot, but still, life is in flux.
Around here there isn't a Shibuya-type insanity. Around here there are few Singaporeans. Crows perch on branches above Shinto shrines and go helter skelter when visitors enter, but then there is a silence as they suddenly pause to take stock. There is an honesty here. This is not Tokyo. Neither is it Kyoto, nor is it Osaka. This is the capital of a lesser known cousin, along this proud strip of rising sun. This is Fukuoka. Between the giggling of a girl on her grandpa's lap, the charred pieces of meat, the gleeful 'clink' of glasses and my own father's bad jokes, I already know - this is Christmas Eve.
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