November 6th. The date does not move, and in this part of Fukui it functions as a second new year.

It is the day the Echizen crab season opens. Because the boats out of Echizen work single-day trips rather than staying out, the first auction is held that same afternoon, and the season's first crab passes from sea to stall with almost no interval at all. The males are snow crab, the females a smaller variety called seiko, prized locally for the roe packed into the shell.

A yellow tag clipped to the claw certifies that a crab came out of this water. Echizen began the practice in 1997, and the tags now carry the name of the individual boat.

The seiko season is brutally short: it closes on December 31st, when spawning begins. Under two months, once a year.

Two weekends in mid-November bring the crab festival to the roadside station at Kuriya, where people come from far beyond the prefecture to buy directly from the town's fishmongers. It is the visible event. The one the town takes seriously is the morning of the sixth, at the harbour, before most visitors are awake.