Soba, so good

Now on to the food. You can kill me for the bad pun later. In addition to temari and mixed Japanese pepper, Nagano is famous for soba, especially the fresh handmade stuff. In fact, you probably can't walk 5 minutes without running into a soba store, and occasionally, you can see a master hard at work kneading his dough or cutting up sheets of the stuff with speed and precision.


I tried some of the handmade noodles at a stall just outside Zenkouji's Nakamise-dori, and what can I say, cool soba on a hot day never tasted so good. I liked it so much I had to get a box as a souvenir... for myself. XD

Soba is a big thing here, and shops sell flavoured soba and other products with a buckwheat theme. And because empty calories are my friends, I just had to stop for a soba crepe when I saw the posters and billboards advertising the sweet and sinful treats.

To be honest the crepe didn't taste all that different from regular crepes, but the alcohol soaked chestnuts in mine made up for it. ^^

Now that summer is on its way, soft serve stalls are popping up everywhere. This particular one caught my eye: miso soft serve. I decided to risk busting my calorie limit for the day and have one, since I'd never seen any other place offering the flavour.

Sure looks like a regular vanilla cone, but it really had a slight but distinctive taste of miso. I reckon if I had it more often, the taste could really grow on me. Mmmm, cold, creamy miso.

After the training session (so its not all fun and games), all of us headed off to a place called Cho Bali Bali for dinner. The place is run by Indonesians, but I suppose they had to one down a lot of the cooking to suit local palates. This was my order:

Even though it wasn't the Ayam Goreng I was used to from Kingsford, it was nice to have some kicap manis flavoured fried chicken served up in a wooden lacrosse stick and washed down with mango beer. Yum.

All in all, top marks to the soba. I wish I'd tried the grilled rice cakes with bean paste filling, but I seriously had no time to do it all. I'm not sure if I'll ever pass by Nagano again, but if I do, I'm definitely heading back to all the food joints. And a few more miso soft serves couldn't hurt either. :p