Buckwheat groats are boiled in salted water, hulled, and dried. That product is called soba-mai, buckwheat rice, and it is never milled. The whole grains go into a pot with vegetables and chicken and are simmered in stock until they swell, keeping a firm pop against the teeth that is closer to barley than to any noodle.

Iya is deep in the mountains of Tokushima and grows rice badly. The account handed down here is that survivors of the Taira, on the losing side of the twelfth-century war, came into the valley and planted buckwheat because it comes up fast. They grew it in place of rice and then ate it as if it were rice. Some versions add that they made this dish at New Year, thinking of the capital they had left.

Very few places in Japan eat buckwheat as a whole grain rather than grinding it into flour for noodles. Whether that is because nobody had a mill, or because nobody in the valley felt the need for one, the sources do not say. The grain carries protein, minerals and fibre on its own, so a pot of it with vegetables was a complete meal without anyone having to think about it.

Food shaped like rice, from a valley that could not grow any.