It is thick for a somen. Hand-stretched and dried like any other, but a grade heavier, and that extra thickness gives it something to chew on which the fine ones do not have. In a trade where everybody competes to draw the strand finer, this district went the other way.

It is made beside the Yoshino River. Cold wind comes down off the Shikoku mountains in winter and the river water is clean, and the drawing-and-drying work suited those two conditions. The method is said to have been carried here in the middle of the Edo period by boatmen working the river, by way of Nara and Awaji.

It is eaten chilled in summer, and also hot in broth as nyumen through the winter. Because the strands are substantial they hold their shape in a simmering pot rather than going to pieces, which is not true of finer somen.

Measured strictly by diameter, the national standard would classify these noodles as hiyamugi rather than somen. They are nonetheless permitted to be labelled somen, on the strength of how long the district has been making them and what the district has always called them. The tradition was weighed against the specification and the tradition won.