Too bad it isn’t summer yet… it was actually raining when we had the soumen. SAMS seems to be having out of season Japanese activities this few weeks^^ Nagashi soumen, as the Japanese like to do in summer, involves flowing white noodles down a shoot of bamboo in ice cold water. You try to catch the flowing noodles with a pair of chopsticks, and what you catch is dunked into a fish-soy-mirin based sauce and eaten.

Before I continue, here’s a webpage on how to have your own nagashi soumen: http://toyohara.com/inaka/somen-e.htm. The effort of cutting the bamboo was… well, a LOT. Thanks to everyone who took time to help and prepare!

Edit: Due to requests, I’ll put up the steps to have your own nagashi soumen party.

Step 1: Search and destroy cut bamboo operation. Cutting bamboo isn’t easy. Especially those with diameters > 1.5 inches. I recommend you get one with a diameter of at least 2 inches (which means it’s gonna be as tall as a 3 story building - get ready for that). Get ready a saw and a matchete. Start off with the hatchet and use the saw when you seem to make no progress with the hatchet. Note:

Step 2 involves cleaning, cutting and properly preparing the bamboo. To split the bamboo, just use your machete to split starting from one end to the other. Get ready some chisels to chisel away the inner bamboo walls.

Now to setup, you can either cut the bamboo (ease of transportation) or have it whole (easy setup). We did the former. For the flow of water, you can use either a pump, a simple hose mechanism, or you could do what we did… use water dispensers…

Step 3: Involves the preparation of the soumen and the sauce. You can use the link here. The soumen needs about a 3 minute cook in boiling water, and then a quick wash in cold running water.

We used instant sauce, much easier. ^^ The sauce tastes of mediocre aroma of sweet and salty soy + fish.

Step 4: Enjoy!

Step 5: Clean up :3

Anyone up for more?

Related posts

• Dango daikazoku (4)
• 1st Anniversary Dinner (9)
• Toy Fair at tHe Spring Part 2 (3)
• Toy Fair at tHe Spring Part 1 (2)
• Spring Charity Fashion Show (5)