Yonaki-soba (night singing buckwheat noodles) means buckwheat noodles cooked in hot soup and sold at little movable stands which are opened on street corners on winter evenings. Sometimes these stands are moved to different locations during the night. To those who had to be out late on cold evenings after there was no more transportation facilities, Yonaki-soba stands were oasis of comfort and warmth. The stand is made simply and can be carried on a shoulder pole, generally having an oil lantern and furin, a wind bell. Nowadays a number of small trucks are converted into Yonaki-soba stands with whistles ringing.
In the Osaka and Kyoto districts, it is called Yonaki-udon, because the people there prefer udon (wheat noodles) to buckwheat noodles. Yonaki-soba was also called Yotaka-soba (night hawk noodles). It was so named because yotaka (street girls) patronized these stands, it is said. Another story goes that for the convenience of takasho (hawkers) the stand keeper had a shelf, known as the hawk shelf, made on the stand where the hot bowl could be placed at the height of his shoulder, so that the hawker could eat the noodles from the bowl with the right hand, while holding the hawk in the gloved left fist.
Yonaki-soba has changed in recent years, but still the hot bowls of noodles, either buckwheat, wheat or Chinese are in much demand on cold winter evenings.