A thin batter, a light coat of breadcrumb, and the skewer goes straight down into the oil. Beef, onion, lotus root, quail egg, and thirty other things, each of them a single mouthful and none of them expensive. They come out as they are ready and you take them in order, dipping each into the sauce in the communal steel container on the counter.

That container is the reason for the one rule everybody knows. You may not dip twice. Since the sauce is shared by everyone at the counter, a skewer that has been bitten does not go back into it under any circumstances. The logic takes no explaining, the notice is on the wall in most shops, and a first-time visitor has it inside a minute.

It began in Shinsekai, the district under the tower. A shop that opened in 1929, on the site of the old Luna Park amusement grounds, is credited with the first version, selling skewers of beef and potato at one sen apiece. It was food for men coming off a shift who wanted to be full and did not have much money to be full with.

One skewer at a time, standing up. How much you have eaten is simply how many sticks have collected in front of you, and the counting is usually done by somebody else.