Devouring passion of Kagawa prefecture for Udon

Zaru Udon

Udon is a type of thick wheat-flour noodle and one of the national food of Japan. This cuisine, which reasonably costs from 300 to 600 Yen on average, is served in several ways. The most common style is to eat with noodle soup and several ingredients as toppings. The other one is called “Zaru Udon”, which dips Udon, served on a zaru (a sieve-like bamboo tray), into chilled noodle soup. The taste varies from region to region. For example, West area uses bland soup but East uses stronger and darker soup. On top of that, each prefecture has their own flavor and quality. So, you can't decide whose Udon is the best.

The red area show the location of
Kagawa prefecure

However, Kagawa Prefecture of Japan which is located on Shikoku Island has an unrivaled passion for Udon. They have one of the most popular Udon brands in Japan, called "Sanuki Udon", which uses relatively tough-textured noodle and the soup based on dried sardines. Here, I will introduce some of their frantic enthusiasm for their soul food.

•  They eat Udons 3 times a day, even 8 times. It's natural.
•  They often face a water shortage because of boiling too much Udon.
• They were imposed a cut on water intake because of boiling Udons too much.
• They think Soba (a type of thin Japanese noodle made from buckwheat flour) is a miscreation of Udon.
• There are no Soba shops in Kagawa prefecture.
• They eat Udon as toshikoshi noodles (Japanese traditionally eat soba on New Year’s Eve. It’s called toshikoshi noodles) on New Year’s Eve.
• They can do an Udon taste test blindly
• The elementary school kids, in Kagawa prefecture, go home if there is no Udon in the school lunch.
•  They treated Udon to a kid, who was in front of a burger store and looked like wanted to eat burgers.
•  McDonald’s were disappeared from Kagawa prefecture.

This is "Sanuki Udon",
which kagawa prefecture is
proud of

Some people address Kagawa prefecture as Udon Ken(prefecture); Are they just merely trying to throw an insult?　No, they also love there and so do I. Unfortunately, I've never been there but if you will understand the passion of the Kagawa citizens for Udon, then you would also like to visit and have a taste of what they love.