This Is A Food Entry

To be honest my favourite thing to photograph is food. Also my father has told me to take photos for him of all the things I eat. So, hopefully there will be many posts in which I will be able to share with you the delicacies of Japan (such as ramen).

A tart from the Exchange Students' Orientation

It all started when a friend visiting Tokyo told me about a shop that she had just gone to the day before. She pointed out the street it was on (Waseda Dori just after it forks near the tip of Waseda University) and told me that the shop had a big red banner bearing the characters "油そば" meaning "oil soba". 

The next day I convinced a friend from Waseda to try the restaurant out with me. The store was cramped, narrow, and full of people. It consisted of a long counter with seats for about six people or eight people, and a vending machine. There was barely enough room to walk behind the customers seated at the counter slurping their noodles. Two chefs were working behind the counter. After we managed to squeeze our way between the bulky vending machine and the eating customers, we looked around for the menu.

Then I remembered that my friend had told me that you needed to buy tickets from a vending machine. We looked back at the machine that we had just inched past. Awkwardly holding our bags, we tried to read the characters on the vending machine without knocking into the backs of the people behind us.

Apparently one bowl was about ¥600 which included one slice of pork and noodles. The ¥1000 bowl gave you more pork. And egg and green onions were also optional for more. (These were all the details we could get from the pictures on the vending machine.) After we inserted money into the machine we quickly made our selections and passed our tickets to the chefs. Upon sitting down we came across another dilemma. What liquid was in each of the plastic bottles on the table? Soon we realized they were vinegar and sesame oil. Then we discovered a nozzle on the table next to a stack of cups which produced COLD water. We liked this place already.

油そば with Egg and Green Onions

After a short wait two bowls appeared in front of us. I added the oil and vinegar and mixed my noodles. Then I ate. IT WAS SO DELICIOUS. There are no words to describe the depths of deliciousness this dish was able to achieve. Okay, so maybe that's being a bit dramatic... but man, those noodles were tasty!

For further information one could consult oil soba's wiki page, although unfortunately it's in Japanese: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/油そば 

I tried the "translate to English" option offered by google and some of the sentences came out very strangely indeed.

(The page also has a photograph of what the dish looked like before I mixed it... Perhaps eating Bi Bim Bap over the summer has influenced me, because now I instinctively mix all dishes set before me.)