They call them koiwashi, little sardines, and the fish is the Japanese anchovy. Hiroshima Bay is thick with the plankton they feed on, so the ones landed here grow larger than the name suggests. Roughly seventy per cent of the prefecture's catch is this single species.

They are washed. Repeatedly. The scales come away and the characteristic sardine smell goes with them, and there is a saying here: wash a sardine seven times and it tastes of sea bream.

Most people do not use a knife to open them. A spoon works, and so does a length of the plastic banding used for parcels. With a bowlful of small fish to get through, speed matters more than elegance, and people who have done it all their lives can hold a conversation while their hands keep going.

The season is June to August, and they appear in the shops and on the fish counters as the rainy season begins. Elsewhere in the country this fish is dried, or boiled down for stock. Raw is a Hiroshima idea. A cheap fish, given a great deal of labour, and eaten raw with soy sauce and ginger. To say it tastes of sea bream sounds like praise, and it is; it is also a remark about how much sea bream costs.