In Kashima, in Saga prefecture, a crucian carp is wrapped in kelp and put into a pot with roughly cut daikon, konnyaku, lotus root, and burdock. Then it is left on a low flame for something like ten hours. The point of the ten hours is that the fish must stay whole and become soft enough to eat entire, bones included, without anyone having to pick it apart at the table.

This is not a weeknight dish. It is made for the twentieth of January, hatsuka shogatsu, the day that closes out the new year observances in this part of Kyushu. The finished pot is offered to Ebisu, with prayers for good catches, for trade, and for everyone in the house staying well.

The day before, a market called funaichi sets up to sell the ingredients, live carp among them. That market has been held for more than three hundred years. People still walk home from it carrying fish that are moving.

I had been thinking of the ten hours as an endurance test, the sort of number a recipe quotes to impress you. Standing that next to the offering changed it. Nobody is enduring anything. The pot simply has to be ready by the twentieth, and the fish has to be whole when it gets there, so the fire is lit early and left alone.