The noodles are not drained. They come out of the pot and go straight onto the basket still dripping, laid down in five or six small bundles arranged in a horseshoe with the open end pressed flat. The arrangement has a name of its own here, botchi-mori, and it is not decorative.

The basket is woven from a mountain bamboo, in a circle, with gaps for the water to fall through. Because it drains from the bottom, the underside of each bundle firms up before the top does, and the noodles you eat at the end of the meal do not feel like the ones you started with.

The condiment is grated radish, but not the mild kind. Togakushi grows a hot one, listed among the traditional vegetables of the province, and it is not stirred into the dipping sauce. You put a little on top of each mouthful and let it burn briefly.

The flour is milled with the inner husk left in, and some shops go further and grind the whole unhulled grain. That makes it darker and considerably more aromatic than the pale sort, and rather less forgiving to cut. Togakushi was a centre of mountain worship, and ascetics came here in numbers over the centuries. Buckwheat is said to have arrived on this mountain as the food they carried with them.