You carry the bowl around with you. Inside the Furukawa market you buy a bowl of rice first, then take it from stall to stall and have slices added, one shop at a time, until you decide that it is finished. The bowl gets heavier as you go, so the last few choices are made with real seriousness and a certain amount of arithmetic. The sellers watch to see whether you have already decided or are still hesitating, and they offer a short opinion to the ones who are hesitating, which is how conversation begins in a place where strangers would otherwise transact entirely in silence. The mechanism produces the sociability rather than the other way round, and that is unusual enough to be worth noticing while it is happening to you.

The fish itself is the same fish sold anywhere along this coast, landed at the same ports. Aomori station is a walk away, the prefectural offices and a general hospital are nearby, and the practical business of living is close at hand in a way that is not true of every regional capital. Preparing properly for the snow is not optional if you intend to stay through a winter here.

Change how a thing is handed over and it becomes a different trade entirely, with different customers and a different atmosphere. The market was rebuilt after a fire and is smaller than it was, though it remains the sort of place where the same customer comes on the same morning each week. Apples appear in quantity in autumn alongside the fish, which is a reminder that Aomori is farmland as well as coast. The stalls close early, as fish markets do. That is the lesson of this building, and it is a cheap one to learn over breakfast.