There is no buckwheat in it at all. The noodle is wheat flour worked with alkaline water, or traditionally with the clear liquid drawn off wood ash, which is the same chemistry by an older route. After boiling it is coated in oil and left to cool in the air rather than shocked in cold water, so it keeps a soft, slightly slippery surface.

The broth is pork and bonito, and the proportion between them is where shops differ. On top goes stewed pork belly, or soki, the ribs, cooked until the meat comes away. Then a slice of pink-rimmed fish cake, a scatter of spring onion, and a small heap of red pickled ginger at the edge of the bowl.

For a while the name was a legal problem. In 1976 the authorities pointed out that a noodle containing no buckwheat could not reasonably be called soba. Two years later a compromise was reached and the term was registered as a special designation. The date, the seventeenth of October, is still observed on the islands as the noodle's own day.

Yaeyama makes the noodle thin and straight. Miyako makes it flat and narrow. The same three words produce a visibly different bowl depending on which island you are standing on.