Tokyo – At the upper-most corner of the island of Shikoku sits the newest prefecture in Japan, Kagawa.
There, in the east, at the foot of a vast mountain, is the Nakano Udon School, where I now stand with my socks off, trousers rolled up, dancing on the spot to Happy by Pharrell.
I feel a pincer-like hand on my upper thigh and the music changes to what sounds like the massed drums of the Royal Highland Fusiliers. BANG-boom-BANG, BANG-boom-BANG.
I keep moving, as does the owner of the hand next to me, the dough in the clear plastic bag beneath our feet taking the force of the downward blow like a boxer’s punch bag.
Ms Ohnishi, the premier maker of udon in the prefecture and head mistress of the school, does not flinch as sweat from my brow makes its salty progress down my chin, the close heat of Kagawa in the summer never having felt closer in the two days I have been here since leaving Tokyo.
“Feet higher, feet higher,” she repeats, pointing out that my legs are smaller than her upper arm.
In this part of Japan they take tradition seriously and here the tradition is to make udon noodles by pummelling them with the soles of one’s feet. I do as I am told.
Over the past decade, Sanuki Udon, the long, thick, white flour noodles have become the noodle of choice in Japan, attracting an almost Bieberesque following. On the Tokyo subway every other advertising hoarding seems to feature fine-boned actors slurping noodles, imploring you to visit Kagawa, the “udon prefecture”. In the region’s capital, Takamatsu, taxis have facsimiles of bowls of udon fixed to the roof, indicating to the peckish that they are in-the-know and ready to drop you off at an udon bar for just the price of a fare.
In 2006, there was even a film released called Udon, which followed the travails of an unsuccessful comedian as he, well, ate in loads of udon bars.
Although highly rated in Japan, it suffered from the disability of having “too much udon in it… too much udon-eating in it [which] takes up screen time that might be spent on… things like plot, romance, family and character development”, as LA Weekly put it.
Udon, my translator points out to me, are the ham sandwiches of Japan. Unlike the British sarnie, they are unflavoured. Like spaghetti, the attraction lies rather more in their texture, their koshi -ness, that is, elasticity and bite in a single mouthful.
They are an everyman noodle in Japan, but in the West udon are the next point of curiosity along the culinary line from ramen noodles, which have now insinuated their way on to British high streets as readily as they have most student kitchens.
How then, did an unknown noodle from Southern Japan become the Next Big Thing?
The restaurant chain Wagamama introduced the idea of the udon to the British public, and its ginger chicken udon dish has proved to be a favourite with diners. It took a small restaurant on Soho’s Frith Street, though, to show those in the know what to expect from the real deal .
In 2010, John McDevitt opened Koya, a pared-back Japanese restaurant with Ercol-style chairs, a menu by chef Junya Yamasaki and its own noodle man, whose job it was to spend the whole day pounding noodles with his feet. “Udon is an obvious choice for an Irishman,” says McDevitt of his choice to open a noodle bar. “It replaces his potatoes.”
Koya served exotic things such as wild boar sashimi, and even more exotic things called udon noodles, which you could order served hot in an even hotter broth, atsu-atsu style, or if you were more adventurous, cold with a hot broth, which is hiya-atsu style.
Goulding’s suggestion that udon are “easier to work” than buckwheat is bugger all comfort to me and my sweat-soaked shirt back at the Udon School. I pound and I pound, and then I pound some more, squashing the gluten back into the wheat, water and salt mix dough.
After allowing the dough to mature for 40 minutes, and after a brief interlude of giggling from Ms Ohnishi, who points out that I am not as fit as I could be, we roll it thin with a rolling pin, until it is about half a centimetre thick, and then slice it into thin strips, which are then tossed into a bubbling pan of water.
The pasta-like smell of the dough cooking and of the dashi warming co-mingle in the hot air, while the sound of Japanese voices making their way up the mountain to the hot onsen baths drifts in through the open windows.
It is a hot, hazy scene, like something out of a 19th-century novella. Or, you know, perhaps there’s a movie in all of this. Never mind the plot, let’s get to the noodles.
The Independent
