A few days ago, a friend of mine tagged me in a comment attached to a video on Facebook. Bless that friend of mine who absolutely knows that I am in for anything food related. Yes, the video was about food, in particular Nagashi-sōmen (流しそうめん), which is translated to ‘flowing noodles’, and is usually served during Summer in Japan. Sōmen is extremely thin white noodle made of wheat flour.
So what happens is that the main star of the ‘show’ is a long flume of bamboo with cold running water passing through it and little clumps of sōmen gets washed down the bamboo and customers are meant to use their chopsticks to catch it. When the noodles are caught, the customers will dip it into light dipping sauce and consume! It can be done as a family or work colleague bonding activity. Everyone will get thrill and laughter from the experience.
For those who can’t manoeuvre a pair of chopsticks, better start practising before attempting this. You wouldn’t want to be seen fumbling around with your chopsticks when trying to catch your food.
Looks like so much fun, and I would love to give it a go one day. My question is… if there are many people attempting to catch themselves some noodles and I am stuck at the end of the line, wouldn’t I get all their chopstick-germs flowing down to my end as well? I think a lot about hygiene in these instances.
Nagashi-sōmen… I might ask for a private room.
Shhh… it’s our little secret.
Leave a Reply