The account of how it started is domestic and specific. Fishermen's wives gathered driftwood on the beach, boiled a large pot over it, and put miso and cod into the pot so that the men coming back off the water would have something hot. Everyone sat round it in a circle on the sand.

The fish is walleye pollock, and it goes in whole, chopped across into rounds. Flesh, head, liver, milt, roe, all of it, which is why the bowl always looks overloaded and something is generally sticking out of it.

From December through February, when the milt and the roe are developing, the flavor deepens noticeably, and plenty of people here consider that the proper season for it. The town serves it all year round now regardless, as its own specialty, and nobody objects.

Along the coast road, national route 8 running through Asahi, the shops selling this stand one after another for several kilometers, and the stretch is known locally as the tara-jiru highway. The signs all say the same thing. The whole character of the dish comes from a single decision that was never taken. Nobody ever sat down on that beach and worked out which parts of the fish ought to be thrown away, and so nothing was.