Shishiro Botan Follows Minamata Noodle Shops Back to the Maker Behind the Bowls

HOLOLIVE — Shishiro Botan watched a pre-recorded tour of noodle shops in Minamata, in Kumamoto Prefecture, on Saturday, ending at the workshop that makes the noodles for most of them. The stream was the fifth episode of the second season of her “47 Prefecture Ramen Tour,” with the theme of house-made noodles and local specialties. Mizumiya Su of FLOW GLOW was tagged on the stream, and chat called out her name as the narration began.

The first stop was a diner that opened in 1950 and is said to be the birthplace of Minamata-style chanpon, a noodle soup with vegetables in a pork-bone broth. Its third-generation owner said the dish was made from nothing more than a description passed along by fishermen and workers from Amakusa who had eaten chanpon in Nagasaki, and that the recipe has not changed since. Shishiro said she had assumed chanpon belonged only to Nagasaki, and that researching it showed her how widely it had spread. She described the Minamata version as having white, smooth noodles and a lightly sweet broth.

“I’d say it’s worth eating the udon just to eat this onion.” — Shishiro Botan and Mizumiya Su, on the salad-onion udon

The tour then moved to a long-established Chinese restaurant, where she tried ramen and a sara udon of fried chanpon noodles under a thick sauce that, she said, covered the noodles from view, and to a seafood restaurant serving clam chanpon. At the last stop, a restaurant run by the noodle maker at a roadside station, she covered chanpon, udon topped with the town’s salad onions, a mixed oil noodle dish and a thin-noodle ramen. The owner explained how the workshop began about ten years ago, when the town’s previous noodle maker retired and someone volunteered to take over. He said the noodles now travel as far as an Akasaka sushi restaurant in Tokyo, which serves them as ramen to close its course meal.

Shishiro closed with a sightseeing segment at Sogi Falls, which she said is 12 meters high and 21 meters wide and is known as the Niagara of the East. She said a cave mushroom farm beside the falls had closed in 2016. Chat answered the tour with a stream of congratulatory emotes, and the stream drew six Super Chats and Super Stickers.

Shishiro said the sixth episode is planned for November and that a separate “Osanpo Gourmet” video from the trip is also planned.