Lake Shinji is brackish. It sits at the bottom end of the Hii River, taking fresh water from the river and salt water in from the sea, and it is reckoned the seventh largest body of brackish water in the country. The salinity is never the same twice.

The clam that lives in it is the yamato-shijimi. The ones taken here are large in the shell, dark almost to black, and they come from a fishery among the most productive anywhere in the country.

They go into soup, and into little else. In winter it is made with miso; in summer, as a clear broth with almost nothing added. The same shellfish, given a different treatment depending on the season, which is not something most ingredients get.

This is an animal living in water that is neither one thing nor the other, in a lake that spends its whole existence being two things badly, adapting continuously to a salinity that shifts with the tide and the rain. That in-between condition is what you taste. The clams sink to the bottom of the bowl and you drink the liquid first, before anything else; the flesh, small and slightly chewy, comes afterwards, almost as an afterthought to what it has flavoured.