A single skewer of bamboo or reed runs the length of the fish, threaded in and out from head to tail, and the whole mackerel is stood over charcoal for about twenty-five minutes. Not a fillet. The entire animal, eyes included, going brown and blistering slowly while the fat drips into the fire.

Wakasa mackerel was originally fish for Kyoto. Porters carried it over the mountains on their backs, salting it so that it would hold on the way, and by the time it reached the city the salt had worked right through and was said to be exactly correct. Grilling it, and pickling it in vinegar, began for the same reason the salt did.

Inland, around Ono, there is a day for eating it: the eleventh day after the summer solstice, the second of July. The story is that the lord of the domain handed grilled mackerel to people worn out by the rice planting, and the custom outlasted the lord by a considerable margin.

You can buy one at any time of year, and people do. But around that date in July it stops being lunch and becomes something else, bought because the calendar says to buy it. There are not many foods left whose busiest day is fixed by the position of the sun.