Visiting Kagawa’s popular cooking class where you make noodles with your feet

Rock out as you dance your way to handmade sanuki udon .

Having a meal out is a great experience now and again, but cooking for yourself not only allows you to customize your meal to your liking, it also provides you with a warming sense of accomplishment.

However, having a professional by your side to gently guide you along the steps to making a famous local food is on a level of its own—particularly when it involves dancing on top of your dough . ▼ Don’t worry, it doesn’t smell like feet.

Kagawa , located on Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands, is not one of the nation’s main tourist hubs, and even our Japanese-language reporter Kouhey has only been there a scant two times in the past.

It is a well-known home to sanuki udon noodles , which are thick, chewy, and have been proven to calm crying babies , and yet Kouhey has hardly ever eaten the food in this land of noodles, so for his most recent trip there, he sought to remedy this travesty.

The town of Kotohira is a popular tourist destination within Kagawa, famous for Kotohira Shrine (affectionately known as Kompirasan) and its climb with over 700 steps.

At the foot of the shrine is Nakano Udon School , a company that is over a century old and has been offering sanuki udon experiences for tourists for over 40 years .

It also featured in the post credits scene of Episode 452 of Detective Conan , “The Phantom of Konpira.” Surely such a well-established company would be able to show Kouhey the way to the most delicious noodles.

Of course, being a person with strong impulsive tendencies, Kouhey hadn’t actually planned on delving into the kitchen himself, but he figured “why not?” and waltzed up to the door where the class schedule for the day was posted.

There were three columns for the three different classrooms in Building A, Building B, and the West Building.

On the day that he was there, only the column for Building B had time plates hung up for 9:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., indicating available classes on that day.

Going up to the reception to ask, Kouhey was told the class would take about 50 minutes , and he was in luck as there happened to still be space available to participate.

The staff also mentioned that on some days the classes get completely booked, so if you want to make sure you get to experience it, booking in advance on the website is the way to go.

If you participate alone and take the noodles home, like Kouhey, it costs 1,980 yen (US$13), but if you eat them on-site, it’s 2,530 yen.