The Complete Guide for Basic Information on Japanese Soba and How to Eat It!

100g of standard soba noodles is about 130 calories. (Calorie content depends on the amount of buckwheat flour used)
Also, since you hardly use oil when cooking soba, plain soba noodles are just around 300-400 calories per serving.
Soba has about half the carbs of ramen, pasta, and udon!
It's not good for you if you eat too much, but I recommend soba for people who want to diet!

The healthy food soba is super popular with health-conscious Japanese women!
Soba made with seaweed like wakame are even more nutrient-packed, making them extra popular.
However, eating soba with calorie-dense tempura ends up as a rather high-calorie meal.... But you can't give up the combination of tempura and soba together!

Out of all the ways to eat soba, these are the top 5 most popular ways to eat it:

Soba served at soba restaurants is made to be easy for customers to eat. If you eat the first bite without dipping it into any sauce, you can really enjoy the sweetness and fragrance of the soba. In particular, you can enjoy the most concentrated flavor in soba from the end of October through November, when buckwheat is in season.

In general, making sounds while you eat is poor manners, but making noise as you slurp your soba is a generally accepted practice. This is because it helps you to enjoy the feel of the soba going down smoothly and the flavor of the dipping sauce. If you slurp the soba as you eat it, you pull in air at the same time, making the fragrance of the soba more noticeable.
Remember this the next time you have soba, and try slurping the noodles!

The dipping sauce for soba is seasoned with strong flavors like soy sauce and bonito flakes, so if you dip all of the soba in, the noodles' flavor will be overpowered by the sauce.

In Japan, there's a saying that goes "True Edokko (people born and raised in Edo) don't bite their soba." This means that people from Edo (now Tokyo) don't bite through the middle of their soba noodles they've started to eat. It's considered unsightly to return the soba noodles you've already picked up with chopsticks and then bitten through to your bowl.

When eating soba, there are many restaurants where wasabi is available as a condiment. I've never eaten wasabi with my soba, so I'm a bit perplexed as to why it's available.

Of course, if you want to use wasabi, that's perfectly fine!
In the past, spicy grated daikon was used as a condiment for soba, and so wasabi became a replacement condiment when daikon was unavailable. There's also a theory that it became a condiment for soba for those who don't like the smell of bonito stock.
As such, wasabi has become a common condiment for soba.

If you buy soba to make yourself from the supermarket, it'll cost around 100 yen, but soba from a specialty restaurant costs around 1000 yen. Aside from the labor costs, the cost difference primarily comes from the quality of the soba itself. Soba noodles sold at the supermarket are about 30% buckwheat flour and 70% regular flour.

At a soba specialty restaurant, you can enjoy 100% buckwheat "Juwari Soba" or 80% buckwheat "Ni-hachi Soba." There's no real answer to whether Juwari Soba or Ni-hachi Soba is the most delicious. Juwari Soba has a deep flavor and fragrance, but it can be dry and a bit tough. Ni-hachi Soba isn't quite as flavorful or fragrant as Juwari Soba, but it feels great going down and has good texture.

Long ago there was a custom in Japan to bring soba with you when you went to introduce yourself to a new neighbor.
In Japanese, "soba" is pronounced the same as the word for "next to," so it came to also have the meaning of "closeness." It came to carry the meaning of "I've moved nearby" and "may we have a lasting relationship" when given to someone.

However, nowadays there are a lot of simple products to give out as introductory gifts like sweets and towels rather than soba, so not many Japanese people know the meaning behind giving away soba. However, the custom of "eating soba when you move" is still famous.

Japan also has the tradition of eating toshikoshi soba on New Year's Eve, not just soba when moving! Soba is long and thin, so it's said that the custom came from wishing for a long life. Also, because buckwheat is easy to cut while eating, the custom also carries the meaning of letting go of the year's hardships.
Since soba noodles are long, they're used to represent wishing for longevity, and by eating it all in one go without biting through the noodles you're putting in the effort to follow through with things like work, making it a lucky dish with auspicious omens built in.

Buckwheat flour is made from the seeds of buckwheat plants, which are harvested in November, so November is the perfect time to eat delicious soba! Soba's flavor and aroma are the best in autumn. During this season, many soba specialty restaurants will put up signs for "Shin-soba," or soba made from freshly harvested buckwheat, and treat their customers to some especially delicious soba.

If you visit Japan during November, be sure to try some fragrant and delicious shin-soba!