The street is named after what it sells. Kamaboko-dōri in Odawara follows the line of the old highway along the coast, and along it are fish-cake makers together with dried fish sellers, katsuobushi dealers, restaurants and confectioners. The site was a fish market, so processing and selling gathered here and stayed, and the street has continued in that trade rather than being converted into something else.

There are no walls or gates: the street is open and can simply be walked, and the frontages have been arranged with the atmosphere of the Edo and Meiji periods in mind. On the same street are shops selling Odawara lacquerware and wood mosaic work, so two quite separate local products — one from the sea and one from the forest — are offered within a few doors of each other. At the Nariwai Kōryūkan visitors can try making a paper lantern, which is one of the older trades of the town and easier to attempt than the lacquer. Trains, both Shinkansen and local, make commuting into Tokyo practical, and the town has its own hospitals.

Woodwork sits beside fish here because the mountains are close. Odawara has both a coast and a forested interior within a few kilometres, which meant that the gear for fishing, the boxes for packing and the bowls for eating could all be made from local timber, and the two industries grew up in the same small town without competing for anything. The name on the street is a fish name, and it is the one everybody uses. What is actually on sale along it comes from the sea and from the hills in roughly equal measure, which the name gives no hint of.