If you or your friends have a car, consider a trip up to the Sefuri area to try soumen nagashi. There is still a little time left to do it.

A few other JETs and I did it a couple of weeks ago and it was the perfect JET day. The folks there are friendly and the soumen filling. 600 yen gets you a nice lunch of soumen which you catch from a sort of “noodle waterslide” plus sauce and garnish (ginger, chives, wasabi). Drive up the road a bit further and you will arrive at a dam/waterfall area where you can swim or relax.

Mark says:

“A long trough is set up, through which a stream of cold water flows, carrying bunches of cold noodles placed in at one end by the cook. Participants sitting along the trough pick the flowing noodles out with their chopsticks and place the tasty morsels in their individual bowls of dip. It goes without saying that being “downstream” from a healthy eater could mean slim pickings, so where one sits is very important! “

If you’d like to give this a try, you can do so for free at Niiyama Park (仁比山公園）in Kanzaki city(神埼市) every weekend from 19th July – 24th August. Niiyama Park is around 5 km North of Kanzaki train station, so you’ll probably need to get there by car. Reservation is necessary but they don’t speak English so if your Japanese isn’t up to reserving a spot at the floating noodles stall, I don’t mind phoning on your behalf (although I’m only here until the end of July). If you do phone them, tell them こくさいこうりゅうのしょうかいで　きました　（kokusai kouryuu no shoukai de kimashita), then they’ll understand that you heard about it from SPIRA and let you try it for free. Their phone number is: 0952-52-2625.

Actually, I mentioned that we were sent by kokusai kouryuu a couple of times and their reaction was sort of, “uh, that’s nice.” So we didn’t get to do it free…but that’s cool. It was only 600 yen. Also, they didn’t seem to mind that I called up the day before and forgot to leave a name or reserve a time. They said anytime between 11 am and 3:30 pm was good to show up.

Here is a Google Map to help you find the place. It’s past the park that has a building shaped like a waterwheel. I can’t remember the exact name of the shop, but the first kanji is hyaku (百) and it’s on the left.

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