Spring is here, the sap is rising, buds are budding and the Food File's fancy turns to . . . noodles? Out in Chofu, heartland of Tokyo's bed-town suburbia?
Ah, but these are not just any old noodles. We're talking te-uchi -- hand-rolled, hand-chopped soba noodles, served al fresco beneath a soaring forest canopy of fresh young foliage. The location is Jindaiji, one of the lesser-known areas of parkland in this multifaceted city of ours.
In the beginning, there were bubbling springs of crystal-clear water, set among virgin forest on the edge of the Musashino plain. Here, in this sylvan setting, a Buddhist temple was founded in 733, only the second in the entire area now covered by Greater Tokyo. But Jindaiji's main claim to fame is not so much its religious affiliation as the noodles with which its name is now indelibly associated.