Togakushi noodles are this year's year-crossing noodles for my family.
It's a Japanese custom to eat soba-noodles at the year end, and it has to be eaten before twelve o'clock mid-night. If you do, you can cross the year to 2013 safely, cutting off not good things happened to you in the year which is about to end shortly and thus preventing them from crossing together with you.
Mitsuba plant smells good! By the way, yellow thing on the top of the noodles is one kind of tempra, called "Kakiage."
Togakushi noodles are noodles made from "soba" harvested and processed to noodles in the Togakushi area in Nagano prefecture in Japan.
Mitsuba, a green thing, you see at the right on the noodles is one of the Japanese herbs most Japanese love!
A Happy New Year to you and to the planet Earth!
