Arrival and Departure

Lately I've discovered this webcomic, "Day by Day," about a small group of of officemates. It's mildly conservative (I think I saw a link at a right-leaning blog somewhere), but more dry wit than anything hamfisted. Today's comic struck a chord with me:
Say all the bad things you want about George Bush, but with two kids of my own, that $1000 tax credit he secured for each kid, well, it got my vote.

My brothers-in-law and I went on a trip to Shikoku the last few days. Like many Japanese vacations, we planned the trip around eating--going somewhere and trying its meibutsu, which usually means "famous food." This time, we headed to the prefecture of Kagawa (on the smaller island of Shikoku), which is famous for Sanuki Udon. Udon is a thick, chewy noodle unique to Japanese cuisine. When my family and in-laws talk about what one food we would take if stranded on a desert island, udon is usually #1. In any case, the Sanuki region is famous for its udon.

My brother-in-law checked on the internet, and found the #1 and #2 udon places in Sanuki, so off we went. We drove over some twisty mountain roads to reach the #1 place before 11:00, when it opened. To our dismay, though, there was already a big line, so we decided to head for #2. A half-hour later, this is what we saw.

I've put the two pictures together and it looks funny because the line goes around a corner. Still, you can see how many people were waiting for one small noodle shop. Actually the line was longer, but I didn't get it all in the pictures. Ahhh, no.

So we drove around until my brothers-in-law gave up and started looking at the GPS. Seeing a farmer out burning some stuff I escaped from the car and embarrassed them by asking him for directions to a different udon place. First he gave me directions to where we had just come from, and when I said "no, somewhere else where there isn't a line," he laughed and sent us off to where he eats. Sure enough, all the license plates were local.

It was actually pretty good. The noodles themselves weren't anything special (my in-law's area is also known for udon), but the soup was great. Usually it's a fish-stock based, darkened with soy sauce, but this was lighter, with a richer dashi (the soup stock they make from konbu seaweed and bonito fish flakes), a hint of sweetness, and a lemon. We'd never had lemon in udon soup before, but it turned out to be really good. I'll have to see if my wife can make something like that when we get home.