The winter yellowtail of Himi has been a gift for a very long time. It went to powerful men and to people of rank, and it is still treated as a formal present. There is a custom called yomeburi under which a bride's own family sends an entire fish, whole, to the household she has married into as the year-end gift.

The fish are killed and then chilled down in ice water while still on the boat. Landed, they have not yet gone into rigor at all, and the flesh has a firm, almost crunchy quality to it that disappears again within a few hours.

For shabu, fish good enough to be eaten raw is sliced thin and passed briefly through simmering kombu stock, then dipped in ponzu and eaten straight away. Some places make the stock with yuzu, or with soy milk, but the essential move is the same and it takes about two seconds.

What that move does is take fat away. This is the fattest fish of the Japanese winter, and the response of the local kitchen is to put it in hot water and let some of that run off before anyone eats it. Nearly every technique in cooking is about adding something to something else. This one is about subtraction, and it is applied to precisely the thing everybody came here for.