Calling it a soup is not quite right. It is closer to a simmered dish that happens to be wet. Taro goes in generously and the starch it releases thickens everything, though plenty of households help it along with potato starch, and there is no agreement about whether that is cheating.

The name is not settled either. Depending on the valley it is konimo, taikai, kokusho, itokoni, noppei-jiru. Dried scallop used to provide the stock. Now chicken or salted salmon cut small often does the job instead, and in winter people scatter in totomame, salmon roe kept salted through the season and boiled briefly before use.

This is deep snow country, and on days when going to the shops was not possible a large pot was made and then buried, pot and all, in the snow outside. That was the refrigerator. It worked, and it left a habit behind: some families still eat noppe cold, straight from the pot, and prefer it that way.

Festivals, memorial services, weddings. Anywhere in Niigata where people are being fed, this appears. It is the dish that signals a household is receiving guests, and nobody in the prefecture appears to have ever needed that explained to them.