Cooked rice is half-mashed, pressed onto a wooden paddle or a skewer, painted with sweet miso and set over charcoal. The paste is usually cut with walnut, sesame or perilla seed, and the smell when it catches is the reason people stop walking and buy one.

It belongs to the mountain valleys: Kiso and Ina in Nagano, Hida in Gifu, the back country of Aichi. The account most often given is that men who worked in the forests made it on the eve of the ceremony held to ask for safety in the hills. It appears to have been eaten by the middle of the Edo period, which makes it old for a snack.

Nobody agrees on the name. One explanation says the shape imitates the folded paper streamers used in Shinto offering. Another says a man called Gohei used to grill rice balls smeared with miso for his lunch. Both are plausible, which is usually a sign that the truth has been lost somewhere along the way and that nobody minds very much.

There are said to be around ten shapes: the sandal, the ball, three small rounds threaded on a stick. Each valley has its own, and each is correct where it stands. In a few places the sauce is made with ground wasp larvae, which is mentioned locally without any ceremony at all.