Term · Japanese culture
Soba
Buckwheat noodles eaten cold off a bamboo tray, and a word that also means the space right next to you.
In Otakana the clue reads: Thin buckwheat noodles, hot or chilled
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- Japanese culture
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- 4 · Normal
Buckwheat grows where rice will not, on cold poor upland soil, which is why the noodle belongs to mountain regions like Nagano and Yamagata. The flour has no gluten, so wheat usually goes in to hold the dough together, and the proportion is a point of pride: eight parts buckwheat to two of wheat is the classic ratio, and pure buckwheat is difficult enough to be a selling point.
Cold service shows the noodle off. Zaru soba arrives on a slatted tray with a small pot of cold dipping sauce, and you dunk a few strands at a time. Slurping is not rudeness here, it pulls air across the noodle and carries the smell. At the end the shop brings the cloudy water the noodles were boiled in to pour into the leftover sauce and drink.
The calendar has a fixed appointment. On the last night of the year households eat toshikoshi soba, year-crossing noodles, on the logic that a noodle which cuts cleanly lets you cut off the year behind you. Moving into a new flat once meant handing soba to the neighbours, a pun on soba meaning nearby.
Spelling SOBA
SOBA is four letters and the shortest kind of problem: too few positions to triangulate with. Both vowels are O and A, in that order, with nothing long and nothing doubled. The homophone is worth knowing, since soba also means beside, written with different characters. Spell what you hear and you will be right, which is rare on this list.