More Than Sushi: A Collection of Cafeteria Noodle

Because I'm shot in the head and don't feel like sleeping (because it would mean waking up and having to work more), I bring you: A collection of caffeteria noodle-food.

The counter is clearly marked, and I think it looks happy. I kinda wish it had an exclamation point. Anyways, you know that here you can get at least one...

NOODLE!

Yeah yeah I know plural is hard. I give the world permission to laugh at my Japanese so long as I have a leave to giggle at its English.

Ramen is, of course, a classic.

The cafeteria ramen is pretty decent. A little greasy, as you can probably see. The first thing you have to learn is that ramen is not healthy. It is a pure grease-juice of concentrated flavour. The second thing; it's all about the soup. The noodles are important, sure, but the soup... it's what holds all those delicious calories. That soup could power a small fighter jet.

And yeah. You're also supposed to SLUUUUUUUUURRRRRPPPPPPP the noodles. Making a completely awsome ammount of NOISE. OhmyGÜTENBERG you have no idea of the sheer volume of slurpy-sound a couple-hundred Japanese students make when they're all eating this at the cafeteria lunch-rush. I know it's the culture here, and I know I should embrace it. But I can't help myself. I still find it obnoxious as shit.

In the realm of healthier options, we have

As far as I know, soba-noodles are one of the healthier types.

the cold seaweed egg ham cucumber soba salad with sauce. All the girls eat this. I suppose that means it's healthy. Doesn't matter, had food.

And it was pretty good, too.

The third one is also a noodle-food, I promise.

Udon are worms. Big fat squishy slimy noodle worms.

There's just a lot of stuff on top.

The noodles beneath are of the udon-variety; really really thick wormy slightly slimy things that for some reason I actually do like. They are weird as all hells, but still...

This is udon salad. It has a delicious sauce at the bottom, and of course a bit of seaweed. On top is a classic onsen tamago (hot spring egg): slow boiled at a low temperature (63-ish degrees, I think), which cooks the egg-white and keeps the yolk liquid.

There are countless other noodle dishes in Japan. I eat noodle so often I can't even noodle what noodle I noodle anymore. Noodle.