Firm tofu and white fish paste are mixed in a ratio of roughly seven to three. The tofu is the larger part, which is the whole point. Wrapped around a stick and steamed, the result is pale, soft and slightly alarming to pick up. The first thing you taste is soybean; the fish arrives a moment later, underneath.

Tottori was slow to develop harbours, and in the Edo period fish was expensive here. The explanation usually given is that the lord of the domain issued an instruction that people should eat tofu instead. Whether or not a decree was involved, the arithmetic held: in the mountain villages soybeans were grown on the ridges between rice paddies, so tofu was something a household could actually get.

What began as an economy did not stay one. Tofu chikuwa turned up at shrine festivals and at weddings, on the plates people bring out for guests, which is a strange promotion for something invented as a substitute. It belongs to the eastern half of the prefecture, the old province of Inaba, and hardly appears in the west.

A fish cake made with more tofu than fish, because fish cost too much. It is now sold at the station, in a box, as the thing to take home.