From ¥45,000
Private Nakasendo Hiking Tours
Soba Making Experience on the Nakasendo
If you have ever been to Japan you may well have tried soba. Soba is the Japanese word for buckwheat. The word is used synonymously referring to both the noodle and the grain. But for todays articles sake we are talking about delicious buckwheat noodles. Healthy, light and nutritious soba is best grown in the mountains. Any decent sized mountain town or village will have a soba shop waiting for you. And the town of Nagiso, in the Kiso Valley, home to Tsumago Juku and the Nakasendo, is no exception.
Highway Oasis is a shop renovated and repurposed in 2021. Though the name may sound like a service station, the shop itself is co-owned by five local parties. Each is an artisan, a farmer or in this case, a soba chef. The resulting shop is a hodgepodge of local artwork, local carpentry, local veg, local snacks, and more. Now onto the soba.
A room upstairs is kitted out for your soba making experience. So once you head up you begin straight away. A bag of local soba flour and a little water await you. Your teacher will show you how to get the correct consistency and how to knead your dough. If you make bread, there are several similarities. After you work your dough, you roll it out nice and thin. About a millimeter or so. Fold this huge sheet of dough twice and out comes the soba knife. This is where it gets really tricky. Luckily the teacher here does a wonderful job. He gives just the right amount of guidance and example, while giving you enough of a chance to learn from your own mistakes.
After cutting your noodles, you can either take them home with you or they will cook them and you can eat them in the restaurant below. This amazing chance to meet local people, learn local culture and eat a rather splendid lunch comes at the tiny price of 700 yen.
The whole experience takes around 20 -30 minutes. Plus cooking and eating will take about an hour or so. On a customized tour with Really Rural Japan this experience is one of several options we can add to your itinerary.