Sauce yakisoba, cooked and still hot off the griddle, is put into a donburi. Then a soy-flavored soup is poured over it. That is the whole of the construction.

It looks like ramen. It tastes like yakisoba. And because the sauce clinging to the noodles keeps dissolving into the broth while you eat, the first mouthful and the last mouthful are not the same thing. The bowl changes underneath you while you are working through it.

It has been eaten in the Shiobara hot spring district for more than fifty years. More than one shop claims to have invented it, and their accounts do not agree with one another. The version at Kobaya Shokudo is said to derive from an off-menu item at a place called Shinsei Shokudo, which no longer exists.

Which of them came first is not something I can settle from here, and the town does not appear to be in any hurry to settle it either. What I would guess, without being able to prove it, is that whoever first did this was standing in front of some yakisoba that had gone cold and needed dealing with, and reached for the nearest pot of broth. The noodles keep drinking, and the bowl gets heavier the longer you take over it.