The Cities Within Cities curation continues this week with a second edition and three new stories. As I hope will become a pattern, the articles, distinct as they are, have come to gather around a shared theme: feelings surrounding home. The reasons we leave it, the places we find it again, the senses that call it to mind, and the many ways we define it. 

Each piece approaches larger questions through smaller moments within the frame of the city. For me, I suspect this is where the possibility of ‘home’ will always remain strongest.

Fateful Day in Yokohama

Millie Hughes 

Scooping up the last grains of fried rice onto my spoon, I listened as auntie told me about her move from Tainan to Yokohama more than thirty years ago. When I asked what had led her here, she paused, then answered with a single word: 「緣分」—“fate”.

Earlier that morning, I stood before Yokohama’s Choyomon Gate, fondly reminded of the Chinatown I grew up with in London. The main street was alive with visitors, queuing outside dim sum restaurants and posing for photos with glossy sticks of tanghulu. Here were some of Yokohama’s oldest Chinese restaurants, their decorated storefronts lined with rows of plastic replicas of Japanese–Chinese fusion food.