Superb somen......bye bye Tanaka sensei
Today was our last lesson with Tanaka sensei and we had a fun final class with him. Mika’s little sister joined in the class after our “somen” lesson with her mum Mako and Koh’s mum, Mina. We did our usual warm ups using our arms, legs and entire body. We balanced and crawled on our tummies and had a wonderful time, enjoying doing the exercises and playing the games that have been a hallmark of Tanaka sensei’s lessons.
You can see from the photos here that we really love Tanaka sensei. He was not only a fun teacher who taught wonderful exercises and
games, but he was compassionate, caring and gentle with all of us. We will miss him very much and are grateful to have had him as our teacher for most of this year. Our teachers wrote in English and
Japanese on the card, to thank him for everything.
Our morning started off differently from usual because we had our last two mums, Mako san and Mina san teaching us about Japan, in particular about “somen”.
Sōmen (素麺?) are very thin—less than 1.3 mm in diameter. They are
white Japanese noodles made of wheat flour. The noodles are usually served cold. The noodles' diameter is the chief distinction between sōmen and the thicker wheat noodles hiyamugi and Japanese wheat noodles udon.
Sōmen noodles are stretched when made, as are some types of udon noodles. The dough is stretched with the help of vegetable oil to make very thin strips and then air dried.
Sōmen are usually served cold with a light flavored dipping sauce or tsuyu. The tsuyu is usually a katsuobushi-based sauce that can be flavored with Japanese bunching onion, ginger, or myoga. In the summer, sōmen chilled with
ice is a popular meal to help stay cool.
Mako san made a wonderful book that explained to us how “somen” is made. She told us that long ago, when people were making “somen”, they first made a dough and kneaded it. The way that we knead dough today, is with our hands but long ago, people stood on the dough to knead it. You can see in the one photo that Mako san is showing us in her book, the people stamping on the “somen” dough.
When “somen” is made, first it starts off being really wide, about 5cm and then it gets thinner, about the thickness of “udon” and then at the very end, it is really thin viz. 1.3mm. In the one photo there is a lady stretching the noodles so that they can become
the desired width. If you go into the Japanese countryside you can still see them doing this. The tradition is to put water in a long bamboo trough, try to pick the somen up as it races along it, in the water and put the “somen” in a bowl with “tsuyu” so you can eat it. We didn’t have a long bamboo trough but we did have another
machine with “somen” swimming in it. Mina san, Koh’s mum brought along this fantastic machine. It has water inside it and when you push the black button, the water goes round and round, like a river. She put “somen” inside the water and our task was to try to pick some up with our chopsticks and put it in our bowls. It was such fun and we loved eating it as well as picking it up from the
racing river.
We learnt that some “somen” is really long; maybe about 2m and people eat it in really strange ways. Some drape it around their neck and eat it like that; some people put “somen” on their ears and eat it in this way; and some people stand on a high place like a balcony and let it hang over the balcony and they eat it in this way. We think that eating shorter “somen” is more practical.
We touched “somen” before you place it inside water to make it soft. It was thin and easy to break. We broke it into pieces inside a tin. Afterwards, we started to have turns to catch it on our chopsticks.
It was a fantastic experience for us all and even though we ate so much “somen” before snack time, we still ate our snacks and lunches.
We spent part of the morning completing all the cards that we needed to make, drawing and cutting. We read a story called “Little blue and little yellow”. It was a beautiful story about mixing the colours, yellow and blue. We enjoyed listening to it and of course we want to mix colours when we come to school tomorrow.
We want to thank Mako san and Mina san for the wonderful morning teaching us about “somen” which is another special thing about Japan. We look forward to eating it when the weather gets warmer.
Tomorrow is the last day of the winter term and it is much shorter than usual. We are not having lunch at school or rest time. School finishes at 11.30am. We are excited to have a fun short day with our friends and teachers tomorrow before the spring break.
Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel