Last weekend I went on my 4th Udon Tour with the teachers from my tech school. It was a great chance to catch up with them a bit now that I don't work there anymore. They haven't changed one bit!
What's an Udon Tour? you might be wondering. Well, udon is a most delicious flour noodle, thick and chewy in texture. It can be served in hot or cold broth with toppings like green onion, ginger, shaved radish, tempura, meat, and so on. As far as noodles go, nothing beats udon for me. That makes it extra nice that I live right next to a prefecture that is most famous for its excellent Sanuki Udon. On top of that, I have a friend who is from Kagawa (Sanuki) and just so happens to love introducing his home prefecture to people. What's more is that his friend has a big car and likes driving around the island. To top it all off, they like English and want to practice more. Perfect combination, right? And so started the Udon tour. We drive up to Kagawa, sample different restaurants (max so far has been 3 in an afternoon), and see other cool things in the area while getting hungry enough for the next restaurant. Obviously I'm not the only one who likes udon enough to come. One of the English teachers who works with them has come a few times. Zandra, who also works there, was one of the first people to go, along with a few other ALTs who've come. It's a lot of fun!
Now these are all mystery tours in that the only thing we know beforehand is that we'll eat udon and be surprised at what else we see on the way. But the reason this one gets the special title is because it had some mysterious sights along the way.
First was the cold spot on the side of Takahachi mountain. The weather that day was a balmy 97F. In the car we climbed up a little mountain, only 450m(?) or so high, and found these stone walls leading down to a sunken hole. Nothing too deep or abnormal looking, but inside the temp dropped down to 40 degrees F! The strange thing was that there was no explanation for why this place was so cold. Mr. M said that even when looking online he couldn't find an explanation for the phenomenon. As we were talking it over on the way down, the other Mr. M, our driver, pointed out the name of the little mountain road we were traveling on: Kubikiri Tougen, or Slit Throat Pass. Yikes!
The other strange thing was finding oyster fossils in a river surrounded by mountains. They were big smooth patches etched into the side of some giant boulders along the riverbed. I don't know much about oysters, but was told that they are a seawater creature. So what were they doing here in the middle of Shikoku? Earlier we'd seen a map of how Japan's topography had changed over the years. The place in which we were standing had once been entirely submerged in seawater. It was hard to picture that with all the lush trees, rice fields, and houses around anchoring us to the present.
You can see all the rest of the fun things we did in a video I made HERE.
It was yet another great weekend to slip into the portfolio of fun times this summer!
