It was too small, often cramped and always full of people, too hot in summer - and far too hot in winter. At busy times the air was thick with tension and held an acrid tinge of sweat and fear.

It knew delight, relief, high hopes and shattered dreams, frustration, occasional acts of astonishing kindness - despair, horror, high tragedy, low comedy, untrammelled joy - and probably more economy with the truth and bare faced mendacity than a British Government dossier on WMD.

Was it only in the fevered imagination of some local foreigners and in gaijin folklore that a tiny cloud appeared always to hover above it, imperceptibly darkening as one`s visa slowly expired?

Every long term foreign resident of Fukuoka will know this building by but a single name - "Immigration"...

In fact, the Hakata Port Fukuoka Immigration Offices (with its hardworking, courteous, conscientious, fair-minded, if a little world weary, staff... - Editor) occupied only the 4th & 5th floors, reached by a pair of rackety old lifts that seemed to take a lifetime as one or other supplicant/applicant moved in slow, grinding ascent to their appointment with fate....

Immigration moved out years ago of course, to spacious, bright, jolly new offices at the airport, today`s more liberal policies and applicants who only ever tell the whole truth, including the complicated bits - but the building lingered on, a brooding symbol of yester-year.

And now it`s gone. So let us bow our heads in solemn memory of times both happy and sad.

And of friends who fell on this far from elysian field... For there they lie. (Shurely "lied"? Editor.)

An era has passed.®