Soba and Horse Workshop in Okayama

It has been a while since I have taken part in any traditional Japanese festivities! This weekend I went to a small country town with my pilates teacher to take part in a workshop for making soba noodles and special horses. We went to a small community center where with gathered with ten or so other people and introduced ourselves. First up, making soba noodles. It was actually really difficult! We had to add egg whites to flour and then mix and roll it. Unfortunately neither of our doughs made the final cut, but it was interesting learning about the process. We had a fantastic lunch with soba noodle soup, rice balls and a variety of other dishes. It was nice to have a warm meal on a cold and dreary day.

After lunch, we went to another room to learn how to make horses out of hay. The tradition used to be that children would make the horses on New Years and then bring them to houses (like trick-or-treat) and they would get rice balls in return. Later, the community would take all of the horses out to the rice fields in hopes of a successful harvest year. This tradition stopped in 1950. After our horse making craft, we went to this stone windmill park. The parks in Japan are in a class of their own. They are always breathtaking.

Helping us with our dry dough.

It is important to start putting
pressure on the dough right away.
Unfortunately we didn't do this so
we had to step on it (it was wrapped in
a plastic bag) to add pressure.

Rolling

I do not particularly enjoy cooking.

Horses

Stone park.

Small castle.

Playing with black and white.