The order goes in first, and then a net goes into the tank. The squid is lifted out, prepared on the spot, and set down in front of you. The shorter the distance between the kitchen and the table, the more transparent it arrives.

It is see-through. You can read the pattern of the plate through the flesh. Left alone it clouds to white within the hour, which means transparency is not a presentation choice here — it is the proof of when the animal was alive. Under the teeth it is firm enough to make a sound.

The squid is the swordtip kind, in season from the middle of April to the middle of October. There is a morning market along the harbour where the dried ones hang in rows. In Yobuko it goes by a different name from the one the rest of the country uses for it, which causes a certain amount of confusion on menus.

When the body has been eaten, the plate goes back to the kitchen and the tentacles return grilled with salt or fried in batter, five or ten minutes later, as a second course nobody had to order. One animal, served twice, in two states that share nothing visually: the clear thing and the brown shrunken thing. It is a fairly direct lesson in what heat does.