In Japan, many cities have a food that they’re known for, and it becomes a thing that people bring back as a souvenir or as a touristy thing that they try when they visit. For example, back in part 3, I wrote about how Sendai is known for gyutan (beef tongue), and there are a ton of gyutan restaurants throughout the city.
On August 7th, we took a day trip from Sendai to Morioka, which is 40 minutes away by Shinkansen (bullet train). What is Morioka known for? Noodles! To be specific, it’s known for jajamen (based off of Chinese Zhajiangmien), reimen (based off of Korean Naengmyeon), and wanko soba. Wanko soba is the one that interested us the most, so we went to Morioka just to try it.
There were a lot of wanko soba restaurants to choose from, and we picked Azumaya Honten because it had good reviews and was close to the train station. Wanko soba is a unique, all-you-can-eat experience. This is how it works:
- You have your own bowl that you eat out of. (It’s empty at first.)
- The server has a tray full of small bowls of soba noodles. Each one is about a mouthful.
- She empties the soba from her bowl into yours, and then you can customize it with toppings.
- After you finish that small portion, she empties another into your bowl. This repeats until you signal that you’re done!
Wanko soba toppings
Before starting, the server read instructions to us in English, though some of it were really tips on how to eat more noodle. Tips like, “you can eat more noodle if you don’t drink the soup,” and so there was a separate container that we could empty the leftover soup into. The funniest instruction was:
“I won’t stop serving you, even if you say you are full.”
So how do you say you’re done? There’s a cover for your bowl and only when you cover it, will the servers stop filling your bowl. Even though you can take your time with each serving, we felt kind of pressured to eat fast! That’s because the server is standing by your table with a refill ready to dump into your bowl. With each one, she gives a Japanese cheer, like “you can do it!” or “one more!” She gets into a rhythm, and we felt kind of bad if we broke it, haha.
As she serves us, she stacks the empty bowls to keep count. We are charged a flat fee, not by the bowl, so the stacks are really just for fun. At the end, she counts them up and gives us a sheet to take home that records how many bowls we ate. On average, women eat 30-40 bowls and men eat 50-60 bowls.
How did we do? I ate 50 bowls, my friend ate 71 bowls, and my husband won at 72 bowls. It was a lot of noodle!
Afterwards, we felt like we needed to walk off that noodle, so we went into a nearby shopping street. If you read part 4, I talked about the Tanabata decorations in Sendai, and it looked like Morioka had its own version of it. The decorations were smaller, but they seemed more elaborate!
We also walked around Morioka a bit before going back to Sendai. Next will be my last entry in the Tohoku region before we went back to Tokyo!
Wow, I had no idea that Japan felt so massive despite it being a few islands together. It certainly has a lot of culture and a lot of food to add to it. It’s so colorful!
At least you broke the record of noodle eating for the women, that’s amazing~ That’s a lot of noddles but I’d still love to eat it all up! Congrats to your husband for winning by a mere bowl, one mere bowl of noodles. They must have been so yummy!
If I were to go to Japan, I think I’d spend so much money on Japanese sweets, ESPECIALLY the infamous tokyo banana 😛 I can be such a sweet tooth especially because Japan has sooooo many special variants – e.g all kinds of Pocky / Kitkat flavors to die for! It’s such an overrated souvenir, isn’t it…especially tokyo banana lol but I really love them.
Gyutan does sound delicious though 😉
Wanko soba has such interesting concept, imo. and so funny too! I totally experience that “i must eat fast” pressure… for some reason, wanko soba kinda sorta makes me anxious since the server waits for you and I just hate that pressure of “oh my, someone’s waiting for me. i have to finish the one i have on my bowl fast.” For some people and especially Japanese, they tend to eat noodles fast by slurping and I can’t really do that, I think. I’m not a slurp-my-noodle kind of eater since I was thought that is impolite ever since I was a kid, LOL. Still, I wish I can experience wanko soba one day but not before experiencing what it’s like to eat the nagashi flowing somen.
I bet my father will eat around 70 bowls of wanko soba or even more too since the serving per bowl is not as full.
I have never heard of wanko noodles before, but I may have to give that a try one day! The concept is definitely intriguing 😀
I had to laugh when I saw jajamen and reimen, especially reimen because the Japanese name for it sounds nothing like naengmyeon. But now that I know they have that, I will want to try reimen there because I love naengmyeon so it’d be interesting try both and compare!
The decoration do look more elaborate! I love how it’s so colourful, too. It definitely puts me in a festive mood!
That sounds like such a great experience to try. It would be strange to have someone so close and so enthusiastic about eating all the noodles! 😀 So many bowls!
Wow! This was super interesting to read, I can’t believe resturants like that exist in Japan. What a wonderful experience it must have been.
Haha, Iaughed at the ‘I wont stop serving you’ bit – that mustve been so funny! I agree, if they were just standing there waiting for you to finish and to refill your food, Id feel pretty pressured too! ? but it seems so cool to have someone help you out like that I must say 😉
Wow, 50?! 72?! I don’t think I would’ve reached that amount, probably stop at 20! With that said though, they do look like small portions.
This sounds so awesome! That would definitely be a fun and different experience to eat from a small bowl that’s about a mouthful. I think that it’s awesome that they keep count of how many bowls you eat and even give you a little card and cheer you on. I will have to keep this in mind if I ever visit Japan someday because I would love to try this!
And you go Cat! Beating the average that woman eat! XD
Holy crap that noodle place sounds amazing!! I can’t believe how different places are in Japan from North America. Too cool! 50 bowls is quite impressive! Good for you.
I love how you’re inspiring me to want to plan a trip to Japan soon! (Hopefully next year when I rack up lots of travel credits).
It’s so cool how every town is known for something. This whole all-you-can-eat process looks interesting. I wonder how much I can eat before I’m done. I spy the tuna cuts on the left side! I’m super curious on how much each bowl have to the point where people are just stacking the bowls! The street decoration looks awesomeeeee :D.
Haha I have loved reading your Japan posts. I had to comment on this one because of the noodles. Nick and I recently saw someone’s video blog on it! I honestly don’t know if I could do 50 bowls even though they are quite small. You did so well! I love noodles though, right now I’m getting hungry… 😛
Oh Wow! Congrats on having 51 bowls, belonging to the men group. LOL! I would really want to go there (with empty stomach, of course. Haha)