Amusement Wanko Soba Kurukuru Wanko — Restaurant in Tokyo

A fun food challenge experience!

You need a reservation, we were able to make one by visiting in person. The staff spoke good enough English in order to make the reservation for us for the next session, and we went to a nearby arcade to pass the time before coming back.

The rules are clearly explained even in English. The challenge starts out pretty easy, but the deeper you go the more the fullness starts sneaking up on you.

They have bowls of noodles that come around on a conveyor belt and the goal is to eat as many of them as you can. Your score is determined by the number of bowls you have left.

For a few tips, firstly not all of the bowls are created equal. As they come around, some of the bowls seem to have less noodles in them than others. They also have a few mystery bowls which makes things fun - sometimes you get free empty bowls, or you may get lucky and get a bowl with sesame seeds inside to add to your dipping liquid. If you're unlucky though you get a mega bowl of noodles, probably something like 6-10 bowls worth in just one bowl. It's probably worth ignoring the bonus bowls, but it does make things more exciting if you go for it.

The noodles themselves don't have much flavour and are more of a textural thing. It's good soba though. The flavour really comes from the dipping sauce, which I recommend topping up frequently from the jug on the table.

You'll want to aim for around 100 bowls as a good effort. I was able to eat 132 and my brother got up to 160. I recommend it as a fun experience, just make sure you come prepared...

Half automated Wanko-Soba.

Basically you are served one (small) bowl of soba after the next, which you are supposed to down at breakneck pace to see how many you are able to gulp down within the time limit of 40 minutes.

100 is the goal. According to the staff, 130-ish is the average for a Japanese man. I somehow managed 154.

The food itself is good. It's basic soba with minor condiments - tasty, but nothing special. But that's really not the point of a visit here. You go here to see how many bowls you can manage to down.

The staff was very friendly and spoke flawless English. Pretty nice place to challenge yourself or with a friend.

If you manage to eat at least 100, you get a fabric sticker to prove you managed to beat...

17th april

Even though it's not very foreigner(English) friendly, it's a very good experience to try the challenge if one doesn't want to leave Tokyo.

They do try their best to accommodate to foreigners, with a video subbed with English, and (can't help but say that) they do have a very cute female staff that proficient enough english to help you a little bit. But of course, you'll have to be proficient in japanese too to ease up their workload trying to help you understand how it...