Food Report: Hana Udon (Asago)

Thursday almost none of the teachers were at Ookura, so I ended up going to lunch with the two male PE teachers. One of them has been described to me as a person that I have to be careful around, jokingly of course. He stands out because of his speaking style. If you aren`t familiar with Japanese, there are variations on the language and the pronunciation used based on your personality, the situation, who, what, where, etc. One of the hardest styles to understand is the rough male style, especially when mixed with a local dialect that differs from standard Japanese.

For example, I might say (in my college-conditioned standard Japanese) "shiranai," he might say shitorahen, with an extreme emphasis on the r, rolling it to sound like a motorcycle...it would sound like shtrrrhn. Carrying on a conversation with him is certainly interesting, and a nice test of my listening abilities, but is also kind of tiring.

Anyway, we ended up at an udon joint. Like a lot of casual udon spots, you order a style of udon at the front, then you take a tray and add various other items to it (think cafeteria in Animal House). Items like onigiri, tempura, korokke, and salad are available at prices around $1 apiece. I went with a large niku udon (shredded beef), a potato korokke, and a piece of squid tempura. If that seems like a lot, I had been doing some stuff with the kids in the gym, and my breakfast of a piece of bread and a small banana just wasn`t holding me.

The udon was good, if a tad bland. I like flavors that punch you in the face, so udon is often the forgotten noodle dish, behind stuff like ramen, pho, and chinese noodle soups. Korokke was standard, but a bit on the mushy side without any of the nice crispiness on the outer batter. This was probably due to it being one of the last 2 on the tray. Same goes for the ika tempura; a lack of seasoning in the batter combined with sogginess kind of sunk this meal.