Shopkeeper Stories

Tag: street food

  • A vignette of street shops in Japan

    A vignette of street shops in Japan

    I love coming across vivid descriptions of street shops when I’m reading novels, and want to start capturing them. Here’s an extract from the book How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino (1937): “Fishmongers, greengrocers, grilled sweet potato stalls, rice merchants, candy shops– tiny stores with facades no more than three or four meters wide lined…

  • Sharing a table with strangers

    Sharing a table with strangers

    The aunty in pink has been working as a hawker for over 40 years. As I sat near her stall chowing down a delicious plate of hor fun (flat white noodles), a man in his 70s came by with a bottle of beer and asked if he could sit at my table. I said: of…