Practice JLPTMeaning
素麺 (そうめん, Sōmen) is Somen — a Japanese food (noodle dishes).
What is Somen?
Sōmen are very thin noodles made of wheat flour. The difference between sōmen and hiyamugi is that hiyamugi is sliced by a knife to make thin noodles but sōmen noodles are thinned by stretching the dough. When served warm in soup, usually in winter, they are called nyūmen (煮麺) in Japanese. Some restaurants offer nagashi-sōmen (流しそうめん[?], flowing noodles) in the summer. The noodles are placed in a long flume of bamboo across the length of the restaurant. The flume carries clear, ice-cold water. As the sōmen pass by, diners pluck them out with their chopsticks and dip them in tsuyu . Catching the noodles requires a fair amount of dexterity, but the noodles that are not caught by the time they get to the end usually are not eaten, so diners are pressured to catch as much as they can. A few luxury establishments put their sōmen in real streams so that diners can enjoy their meal in a beautiful garden setting.