Eating a meal of nagashi somen requires a nimble hand with chopsticks. Otherwise your dinner could flow right past you. Somen are white wheat noodles, which Japanese cooks serve cold or over ice during the summer. Typically, they’re boiled and cooled, then eaten with tsuyu, a sauce made from dashi soup stock and soy sauce. Common toppings include cucumber and sliced mushrooms. The Japanese have eaten somen since the eighth century, but they didn’t start floating the noodles down artificial rivers until modern times. In the southern town of Takachiho, in 1959,…
