Shiroebi-tei

Shiroebi are tiny translucent shrimp, three or four centimetres long, that live in the deep trench running through Toyama Bay. They are caught commercially in effectively one place on earth — this bay — which is why almost nobody outside the prefecture has eaten them fresh. Raw, they are faintly sweet and dissolve rather than resist; fried, they go crisp with almost no flesh to speak of.

The catch is the problem: each shrimp has to be peeled by hand, and a bowl of sashimi represents a great deal of somebody's afternoon. Shiroebi-tei is in the market complex inside Toyama Station and does two things — a tendon of fried shrimp for ¥1,690 and a bowl of hand-peeled raw shrimp for ¥3,600 — which makes it the most efficient way for a traveller to eat the one thing Toyama Bay has that nowhere else does, without leaving the station.