Sanjo has been a metalworking town for centuries, and its blacksmiths were famously too busy to stop for lunch. What they ordered instead, delivered to the workshop floor, was this: a soy sauce ramen with thick curry poured over it. The curry holds its heat and clings to the noodles, which matters when the bowl has to survive a trip across town on the back of a bicycle.

People say it has been eaten here for more than seventy years. The city's own page puts the history at over eighty. Either way it existed for decades as an ordinary working lunch before anyone thought of it as a regional specialty. That reframing came later, after the flood of 2004, when Sanjo needed something to rally around while it rebuilt.

There is a second half to the story that made me laugh. The same bowl was also the standard closer in the drinking quarter, the thing you ate on the way home at night. So the men who could not spare time for lunch and the men who would not go to bed were ordering from the same kitchens.

The recipe is not fixed. Some shops build the curry into the broth, others ladle it on top, and locals will tell you at length which one is correct. A map put out by the city currently lists fifteen shops. Nobody seems interested in settling the argument.