A landlocked city, and its best-known noodle bowl has herring on it. Not fresh herring — migaki-nishin, split and dried until it is hard as wood, then soaked back to life and simmered in soy sauce and sugar until it is dark and sweet. That goes on top of hot soba.

Being surrounded by mountains, Kyoto became good at reconstituting dried things. The herring came from the Hokkaido coast, around Esashi, carried down the Japan Sea by the northern shipping route and then hauled over the passes. It travelled a very long way to sit in a bowl here.

A shop called Matsuba is credited with putting the two together in 1882, in the person of its second proprietor, Matsuno Yosakichi. The shop is still there, still trading under the same name, next to the theatre district.

Once the fish is in the broth, the syrup it was cooked in begins to leach out, and the soup gets steadily sweeter as you work through the bowl. By the last mouthful it is not the same dish it was at the first. A fish that took months to preserve and hours to soften spends a little more time working on the bowl after it gets there. Very little in this city is in a hurry, and the herring is no exception.