You buy the rice first. Kushiro's Washō Market occupies a building in front of the station, fishmongers lining the aisles, and the way to eat here is to buy a bowl of plain rice and then carry it from stall to stall, having slices of whatever you choose laid on top until the bowl is finished. Because the bowl stays in your hands the entire time, the sense of choosing never quite goes away, which is the whole difference between this and being served something by somebody else. You will see people who have overloaded theirs give up and head for the till looking faintly embarrassed about it. The sellers price by the slice and will tell you honestly when you have enough. The fish is good, but that is not the unusual part of the arrangement and not why the market is worth an hour.

The station is immediately outside, medical services and shops are close, and in that respect it is a straightforward place to spend time in a city that is otherwise spread out. The winter cold and the snow here require a level of preparation that people from milder parts of Japan reliably underestimate on a first visit.

Food you assembled yourself is remembered differently from food that arrived complete on a plate. Kushiro was one of the great fishing ports and the market is a remnant of when the catch came in on a scale that supported the whole city. The stalls are family businesses and several have been in the same hands for generations. Prices are marked plainly and there is no bargaining, which suits the hour of the morning. What the market is actually selling is that extra step, and it costs almost nothing to include in the transaction.