Udon = Delicious!

Just like everything else here, doing something as simple as eating out is an adventure when you don't speak the language, don't know the food, aren't sure of polite etiquette, and can't read Japanese.  But we're finding out that the best policy is to just go for it -- whether it's trying to ride a bus, order dinner, or get money out of the ATM.  Any failure gets us one step closer to the right way and it beats the alternative of never trying anything new or exciting.

Since we are saving money on our food budget by eating the cafeteria, Kris and I have extra money that we've decided to put towards eating one meal out once a week.  Last week was Kris' turn to pick so we went to Kame House, a place that served a very delicious beef burger.  Since most "burger" places in Japan make their burgers out of pork instead of beef, we sought out the Kame house for a good American-style burger.  It was a 15 minute walk from our apartment and well worth it!  The burger and fries were a bit pricey, costing 850 yen (about $10), but definitely worth it when you need an American burger fix!

This week was my turn to pick and I wanted to try some of the local flavor, so we went to an Udon restaurant near a grocery store.   Udon are thick noodles made from wheat-flour and usually served with a mild-flavored broth made of soy sauce, dashi, and mirin (a rice wine).  It is usually topped with scallions (unless you are Kris and forgo the scallions).  In the east (where we are), it is made with a dark soy sauce.  In the west, it is made with a light soy sauce.

I was tempted by this place because there are big glass windows around the kitchen so you can watch the noodles being made.

This worker rolls the dough out and wraps it around a wooden poll.



The poll is put over this machine and the dough unrolls into it.  This machine cuts the dough into thick noodles.



The noodles are then boiled.  When the are finished, the are taken out and weighed (like the man here is doing) before they are given to customers.

When we got to the restaurant, everything was written in Japanese (as usual) and no one spoke English (again, a common theme in our experience thus far).  Luckily there were pictures and the Udon restaurant was set-up buffet style.  First we pointed to the style of soup we wanted.  Then one of the workers filled our bowl with noodles and placed them on our tray.  Then we moved down the line and selected what we wanted to put on our noodles.  All the food was fried and labeled in Japanese, so we literally just GUESSED at what the fried blobs were!  For Kris this was not a big deal, but I felt like I was playing Russian Roulette, trying not to end up with a meat that was seafood (since I HATE the stuff).  I figured if it was seafood, Kris would eat it and I would just eat my noodles without meat.

We paid the cashier and she showed us (using Japanese and the good ol' universal thumbs up sign) how to use the soup dispenser to put the amount of liquid we wanted into the bowls so that they would be even better.  She also showed us where the scallions were so we could add them to our Udon.  Nervous, I sat down with my bowl and cut open the meat.  After timidly tasting a teensy tiny bite, I was relieved to find out it was chicken or pork -- definitely NOT seafood.  To eat udon, you wind your udon around your chopsticks and slurp them up -- at least, this is what I did after watching two other people eat their udon.  I probably freaked them out since they were sitting right next to us haha!

The udon was DELICIOUS!!!!  The noodles were thick and tasty.  We were both stuffed when we finished our meal and it only cost 850 yen (about $10.20) for both of us to eat.  We will definitely be going back to that place again.