Skewers of meat over live charcoal, a flame rising through them in the dark

Come down the alley.

Skewers over charcoal, cold highballs, and a counter that seats the people who booked.

01 The alley

Walk it end to end.

Two walls, the eaves close overhead, and a lit end. Something is cooking at every door, and nothing down here needs a booking, a jacket, or a plan. You put your head in, you find a stool, you start with two things and see how the night goes.

01 A yokocho lane is about two metres across. That is the whole format.
02 Light dies about a metre from the lamp. Then the next one starts.
03 One lamp is the whole sign. If it is lit, they are open.
04 Everybody is at somebody's elbow. That is the format, not a fault.
05 Somebody left a bicycle. They are not going far.
06 You sit down. That was the whole plan.

An izakaya in the yokocho tradition. Small plates, a yakitori counter over charcoal, sake and highballs, and one seated omakase counter at the end of it.

Charcoal, salt, and about ninety seconds of somebody's full attention. You will smell it from the top of the alley, which is the only advertising this place has ever needed.

Grilled chicken on bamboo skewers laid across a plate, the tare glaze still wet and scattered with spring onion

Paper lanterns burning in a narrow lane at night, the light dying a step from each of them and the dark closing in between

02 The lamps

Akari is the light a lamp gives.

A lane like this one is dark between the doors, and every door answers for itself with one lamp. Lit means somebody is behind it, cooking. That is the whole signage system, and it is the reason this place is named after it.

03 The order

Ordered a few at a time.

The way it goes at a counter. Two or three things, then two or three more, and a drink that arrives before the food does.

So this is not a list. It is the order of a night, in five photographs, in the sequence the counter actually runs.

First, a drink Beer or a highball, before anything is ordered.
Then the fire Small pieces on bamboo, salt or tare, turned by hand over charcoal.
Two or three at a time They come as they are ready, not as a course. You order again when the plate is empty.
Off the skewer The small plates the grill never touches.
Then sake Poured cold, by the glass or the flask.

The board on the wall is the menu, and it changes with the morning delivery.

Skewers glazed and smoking over a bed of live charcoal, the embers showing red underneath

04 The counter

The seat that faces the fire.

At the counter you do not order. You sit down and it starts.

That is the one thing here worth planning your night around, and the one thing you cannot walk in for. It runs at a fixed number of seats, a fixed number of sittings, and it finishes when it finishes.

Charcoal burning down to red cores in a grill bed

Tell us the night and how many of you, and we will tell you what we can seat. That is the whole booking.

Reserve a seat

A traditional wooden shopfront at night, one warm lamp burning over a hanging noren curtain

Tell us the night and the number. We answer personally.

Reserve

Reserve a seat.

Requests reach a person, not a queue. Nothing is charged now, and nothing is confirmed until somebody here replies to you.

Name

Phone

Which seat, and how many of you

These are request sizes. We tell you what we can seat when we reply.

Which night

Time you would sit down (optional)

Roughly is fine.

Allergies, dietary needs, anything else (optional)

We confirm every request personally, so treat it as sent and not as booked until you hear back. We use what you give us only to answer this request, and we do not keep it any longer than that takes.

We have your request.

Someone will confirm it personally. Nothing is booked until they do.

A lit paper lantern burning outside a shuttered street front at night, a noren hanging beside it

05 Visit

Find the lamp, then find the door.

Walking in

The alley tables are walk-in. The counter is the one seat down here you cannot turn up for, so if that is the one you want, ask for it before you come.

Getting here

Look for the lamp rather than for a sign. Nothing down this lane is signposted twice, and the door you want is the one with the light burning over it.

Find us

Address: Not published on this build yet.
Opening hours: Not published on this build yet.
Phone: Not published on this build yet.

Three lines are blank because this is a demo build and the venue has not given us the street, the hours or the number yet. Nothing has been guessed in their place. Ask for any of them in a reservation request and a person will write back with the real ones.

Reserve a seat

A narrow stone lane at night with one lamp burning at the far end

What this page is still waiting for

Every row below is unanswered. Until the kitchen answers one, nothing standing in for it is written anywhere on the rendered page: no example, no range, no "from" figure, no approximate hour and no guessed address. Where a fact is unknown, the page either says nothing about it or says plainly that it is not published yet. The three rows in the Visit band's FIND US panel are the second kind: a labelled line waiting for a value, with one sentence saying why it is blank, and no value guessed in the meantime.

Where and when, taken off the Visit band

F02 F03 Town and full street address, printed exactly as it should read, including which alley and which end of it. It drops straight into the ADDRESS row of the Visit band's FIND US panel, which is already drawn and already labelled.

F04 Map link or place ID. The "Get directions" button is not on the page at all until this lands. It will never point at a guessed address.

F05 The number that answers during service, and whether it is the same one for reservations. The booking form deliberately offers no phone fallback while this is open, and the PHONE row of the FIND US panel becomes a tap-to-call link the day it lands.

F07 F08 Opening hours for all seven days, plus last order at the grill and whether the bar runs later than the kitchen. The seven-row table is deleted rather than blanked, and the OPENING HOURS row of the FIND US panel is the slot it comes back into the day these arrive.

F31 Step-free access, stairs to the counter, and the accessible toilet, answered truthfully rather than hopefully.

F32 Payment methods, and whether there is a card minimum.

The counter, taken off the omakase band

F12 Seats at the counter. How many there are. The booking form's counter party sizes are request sizes until this lands.

F13 Sittings a night, at what times, and how long one sitting runs. The time field on the form stays free text while this is open.

F14 Price per person at the counter, and what is included.

F21 F22 Who runs the counter, the name they want printed, whether they consent to being named, and two or three true sentences about where they cooked before.

The reservation policy, taken off the form

F09 F10 Booking and cancellation window, which parts are walk-in only, and the largest party you take at a table and at the counter.

F11 Deposit or card hold for the counter, and how much.

F29 Age and ID policy, for the alley and for the counter.

The menu, moved here in round 3 and still open

F16 Item names. What is actually on the board, in the words the kitchen uses for it. Needed before any name can appear beside a photograph.

F17 Prices, by the piece. No price of any kind is on this site. A "from" figure counts as a price and is not a shortcut around this row.

F19 The sake list and the highball and beer list, with what is poured by the glass and what is poured by the flask, and the prices for each.

F20 Cover or seating charge. Whether there is one per person, how much it is, and whether it is charged at the counter as well as at a table.

F30 Allergies and dietary requests. How they are handled, what can be changed on the night, and what has to be asked for at booking.

F16 F17 F19 Whether a full printed menu gets its own page once the three rows above land, or whether the board on the wall stays the only menu.

Identity and proof, taken off the footer

F01 Legal or trading entity name, as it has to appear in the footer.

F28 Social handles. Which accounts are live and should be linked. The "Follow along" control is off the page until then, not disabled on it.

F24 F25 Awards and genuine, permissioned reviews. The proof band is built and hidden. No placeholder review prose exists anywhere in the file.

F26 The venue's own night photography. Every frame on this page is licensed placeholder, credited in assets/README.md. Three flags ride with the current set, each checked against the rendered page rather than against this list. One: several alley frames carry other businesses' names, on lanterns, noren and shutters, cropped so no telephone number and no price is legible in any frame. Two: two people are on the page, both in alley frames, neither with a resolvable face. Alley frame 05 carries a soft profile behind a shop window, past the out-of-focus bicycle, about 24 pixels wide at its largest. Alley frame 02, which is also the Visit inset, carries a figure in an apron in the lit doorway at the far end of the lane, motion-blurred and smaller again. Neither is named, described or presented as anybody at Akari Yokocho. Three: the bottle in order frame 05 carries a brewer's label with a dragonfly device on it. It reads as a bottle standing on a bar rather than as this venue's mark, and no brand name and no price on it is legible. The face that stood on the first rung of the order band left the build in round 8 with the photograph that carried it, and the third-party shirt mark left the same way in round 6, so no face and no mark that could be read as Akari Yokocho's own appears in the hero, in the order band or in the share card.

F34 F35 F06 The live domain, the Telegram owner and the reservation inbox. Until these land the form cannot be pointed at the hub, so no request reaches a person. See the numbered blocker list in BACKEND.md.

Policies the page keeps but does not print

Two standing rules that used to be printed to the customer and are now recorded here instead. One: no dish name, no price, no quantity and no "from" figure appears anywhere on the rendered page until the kitchen writes one down; every line under every photograph in the order band is a statement about the format of a charcoal counter, not about a menu. Two: removing a chip from the rendered page never means inventing what it stood for, and nothing in this build's round-5 revision added a fact. The same rows are in BACKEND.md and in the fact ledger in BRIEF.md.