Japanese Noodles

I'm sure most of you are tired of my restaurant reviews now (and I'm pretty much running out of "interesting" restaurants to review). So today, I'll write a bit about Japanese noodles and this will be my last food-related post unless I find something really interesting.

In Thailand, when you mention Japanese noodles, the first thing that will come into people's mind is probably "ramen", thanks to Hachiban. But in fact, there are 3 types of noodles in Japan — Ramen, Soba and Udon. Ramen shops will almost always sell only ramen. Some shops will sell both Soba and Udon and some will sell only one type.

Ramen, as you all know, is yellowish noodle and usually heavily seasoned.

Soba and Udon are, however, usually lightly seasoned. Udon is thick white noodle while Soba is the thinner grey noodle. You can order them as either hot or cold (cold is great in summer!) and they are sometimes eaten with tempura.

(EDIT: An earlier version of this post confused Soba and Udon, sorry about that, it's corrected now.)

Udon

Soba

Tempura