Nagano is a long way from the sea. What came from the sea was processed on the coast first and then carried inland along the salt roads: the Chikuni highway, the Hokkoku highway, the Akiha highway.

Shio-maru-ika is squid, boiled and then packed in salt. It began to be made from the middle of the Edo period, and the account given is that it started as a by-product of the salt trade itself rather than as a food anyone set out to create.

In a province with no coast and no refrigeration, it was both a rare piece of seafood and a store.

It is very salty, so the first job is taking the salt back out. It soaks in water, and the water is changed two or three times during the process. Then it is dressed with vinegar alongside cucumber and wakame. It is eaten mostly from spring into summer, replacing salt and pairing it with vegetables that cool the body, which is how people here got through the heat. It appears in school lunches, so children here grow up eating squid that arrived by mountain road. It is eaten across the whole prefecture, most of all in the north and the south. Something that existed only because salt was being moved through the mountains is what stayed.