Toshikoshi Soba (年越し蕎麦, New Year's Eve buckwheat noodles)

Toshikoshi soba belongs to the last hours of the year. The noodles are long, but they break cleanly, and that is the small poetry of the dish: long life wished for, old trouble cut off. No shouting. Just a hot bowl before the calendar turns.

The bowl looks ceremonial, but the work is plain. Make a clear dashi, season it in the Kanto manner with dark shoyu, mirin, and a little sugar, then cook the soba only until tender and rinse away the loose starch. That rinse matters even for a hot bowl. It keeps the broth clean instead of cloudy, and clean broth is the whole dignity of the thing.

Shrimp tempura on top is a familiar Kanto way to make the bowl feel properly year-end, the curved shrimp carrying its own old sign of long life. Buy the best dried soba you can, with buckwheat listed before wheat if possible. If the noodles are dull, no garnish will rescue them. Nothing hidden, even on a holiday.