A dozen or more things in one pot. Chinese cabbage and cut kelp are compulsory; after that come daikon, shiitake, carrot, taro, chrysanthemum greens, ginkgo nuts, arrowhead, fish cake, chicken, freeze-dried tofu, and in some houses dried sea cucumber. The count has to be an odd number, and it has to be seven or more.

It is traced to the Shimabara rebellion. During the siege, rice cakes were stockpiled as rations and whatever could be gathered from the mountains and the sea went into a pot along with them. Whether the leader of the rebellion personally ordered it, as the story has it, is not a thing anybody can check now.

The version people actually eat was assembled much later, in 1813, by the first proprietor of a restaurant in the town, who took the siege dish and altered the seasoning. Nearly two centuries separate the emergency from the recipe. The dish that gets called historic is the second one.

It is not a new year dish, whatever the name suggests. It is served all year, on ordinary days, in restaurants along the same streets. A method whose only governing principle is to put in everything you can lay hands on does not really belong to a season.