Vinegared rice and toppings are packed into a wooden frame, pressed, and cut into blocks. The cut face shows the layers in section, so that you can see exactly what is in it before any of it reaches your mouth. Nothing raw is used, which means it keeps. No soy sauce is offered, because none is needed. The seasoning was finished in the kitchen, before the box was ever pressed.

Osaka's pressed sushi divides itself by the shape and the size of the mould used, and each division has its own name: bo-zushi, kosode, battera, matsumae, and hako-zushi. The box version is credited to the third-generation owner of an old shop in Semba, working in the Meiji period. Alongside the cheap pressed sushi already being sold, he built something with sea bream, prawn and conger eel, and made it look like an object rather than a snack.

There is a phrase for it locally: the two-sun-six-bu kaiseki. Inside a box about eight and a half centimetres across sit the simmered dish, the vinegared dish and the grilled dish of a formal meal, each of them prepared separately before assembly.

A single slice, seen end on, is a menu. You do not find out what you are eating until it has been cut.