Nuta is a kind of namasu, dressed with vinegar and miso worked together.

The spring onions, wakegi, are cut into lengths of about three centimeters and boiled starting with the white parts, which take longer, then cooled. Sugar, white miso, and white sesame are ground together in a suribachi and vinegar is stirred in. The wakegi is squeezed dry and folded through the dressing with boiled octopus.

Onomichi and Mihara are the growing area, and they grow a great deal of it, so this is a dish made at home rather than sought out. The prefecture's wakegi producers' association is made up of the cooperatives from those two cities and nothing else.

There is a reason this plant carries meaning here beyond being a crop. Wakegi multiplies by the bulb dividing, and because of that it has long been treated as an auspicious thing, a sign of descendants and continuation. The name says so: wake means to divide. Some households add squid or shellfish instead of octopus. It is a spring dish. The dressing is ground rather than stirred, which is why it clings. A plant that increases by splitting itself gets eaten as a wish for a family that will do the same.