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Nagashi Soumen and Wanko-Soba
Traditional and fun noodles to eat throughout the hot Japanese summer days |
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 Nagashi Soumen |
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Japan is pretty hot in the summer, therefore feeding habits do change during that season as well, looking for more refreshing dishes.
Flowing Noodles
One of the most popular summer dishes in Japan is called soumen. It’s a very fine noodle made of wheat flour and usually served cold with a special soup stock (tsuyu.)
For children and soumen lovers there exists a very fun way to serve them: flowing noodles! In Japanese they call it Nagashi Soumen.
The noodles are placed on a very long bamboo stick (bowl). The bowl carries freezing water, and the soumen travels sliding through the bowl while people pick them up with chopsticks; they immediately dive them in the tsuyu soup and eat them straightaway.
Being able to properly taste and enjoy these noodles requires some skills, as it might often happen that, noodles unsuccessfully grabbed in time will not be tasted, as a result, it appears to exist an added stress to manage well and eat as many as you can!
They’ve even marketed and sell a curious machine to enjoy nagashi soumen at home.
Bowl Eating Competition
Soba is another type of fine noodle made of buckwheat flour or Saracen-wheat flour; also very commonly served cold with a sauce or soup like soumen. And, of course, there’s also a peculiar fan way to eat it.
Wanko-Soba is a sort of buffet dish where soba is served in very small bowls.
At the restaurant, a waitress places herself behind the customer and keeps replacing the empty bowl for a new full one as soon as you’ve finished eating it... This is done in an endless repeatedly manner, so that the waiter will be replacing empty bowls non-stop until the customer gives up on eating and surrenders.
To get an idea of food quantities, fifteen bowls of wanko-soba make up for a standard helping.
The record in the wanko-soba eating competition is at 559 bowls eaten by a single person! An unbeatable record, which remains unbeaten for 10 years.
Is there anyone willing to try and beat that record?
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