An interesting fact about myself – I have what is called Misophonia, a disorder of the inner ear in which certain noises cause me to feel large amounts of anger. It sounds weird but its something that I’ve been grappling with my whole life but there is a lot of ways where I can mitigate this.

Now as you know soba is traditionally slurped like most Japanese noodle dishes which is a sign of respect and saying that you think the food is delicious, but this is literally my worst nightmare!

I love food though and this is one of those dishes I really wanted to try in Japan so I decided to go with it.

Walking down the street in the evening I’m starving as I’ve just had a huge afternoon of taking photos and seeing beautiful places in Tokyo. My friend and I are hungry we don’t know exactly what you have to eat but I know I want to try something off my bucket list, whether it’s going to be sushi curry Ramen or soba I do not know yet.

Walking down a dark alley I can see businessmen drinking and enjoying themselves, the neon lights of the stores and restaurants ablaze as I’m trying to figure out what they’re laughing about. Is it an inside joke or are they just so drunk that they don’t care? That’s what I love about Japan –  everybody enjoys having a good time even if they are incredibly hard workers.

We’re looking for restaurant we don’t know exactly what but we eventually pass a restaurant that looks like a fast food place. They say they have soba and ramen so we decide to do something nice and cheap. I know that it’s not the best place but it’s still nice – comparatively speaking it ain’t no McDonald’s!

We go up and there’s an electric kiosk just like most restaurants in Japan now that has 20 different languages and they just print your ticket out so we don’t have to worry about ordering our food. Our menus are all in perfect English. We put our money in the machine and it spits out a little piece of paper which we hand the clerk.

(God, Japan is so efficient)

Then we sit down and wait, my friend and I are talking about life, loves and how we enjoyed our time in Tokyo today. We looked over some photos we had taken throughout the day until our food arrives. I saw the wisps of steam before I saw the waiter.

You know that feeling you get when you see your food coming towards the restaurant? That feeling of happiness and love that you wish you could have forever? Well, I had that for tenfold!

The nice waitress set down our food bowed and left and what I saw was a bowl of soba that was so perfectly made I could not believe it. The steam was engulfing my whole face as leaned forward, it smelled sweet and salty.

I realised I was so hungry and I tried to do the slurping but I just couldn’t handle it, the noise drove me insane! I still tried to enjoy the noodles slurping them up and drinking the broth, truly enjoying the taste – it was delicately refreshing and complex. As you sip the broth it starts off salty in the mouth then changes more to immediate sweetness; complex like Daniel Radcliffe’s portrayal of Harry Potter and the last movie.

The noodles are perfectly cooked, not too hard or too soft to give you just the right amount to feel to make things interesting. It seems as if this bowl of noodles is literally warming me I can feel my soul relax as if I bought my soul a loveseat with nice leather it just sinks into the seat to fall asleep. It was a beautiful meal! After about 30 minutes of eating I was full, warm, and happy but tired. What a nice meal, God I love Japan. We stood up bowed to our gracious hosts and walked out the doors in to the engulfing cold. Let the adventures begin again.