Yaro Abe’s Midnight Diner began on 1 October 2006 and is still running. The setting is a small eatery in a Shinjuku back alley that opens at midnight and closes around dawn. The written menu is a pork miso soup set and a few drinks, but if a customer names something else, the owner will make it as long as the ingredients are in the kitchen.
A chapter is usually one customer and one dish. The food is unremarkable, sausages cut to look like octopus, a rolled omelette, buttered rice, and attached to it is a short account of that person’s situation. The owner, who has a scar across his face, does not ask questions and simply cooks; customers become acquainted with each other, or quietly stop coming.
There is little explanation and no forced resolution, which makes it easy to read one chapter at a time. It has been adapted for television and film several times, including a Korean remake.
