Wanko soba is one of Morioka's three great noodle dishes and the loudest meal in Japan. A server stands behind each guest and tips one small serving of soba after another into the bowl in front of them, calling the rhythm aloud, until the guest claps the lid shut and concedes. It is not a tasting. It is a contest, with a running score and a great deal of laughter.
Hatsukoma, founded in 1960 in front of Morioka Hachimangu shrine, has built that regional custom into a working piece of hospitality. It takes banquets, and it travels: the kitchen can be set up at the venue itself, which puts wanko soba directly into a reception or a gala. Teams of five, contests of up to about 50 guests — and colleagues who arrived as strangers are shouting each other's counts by the twentieth bowl.
One standing reception is much like another; a wanko soba contest is not, and it does the icebreaking most evenings only hope for. Guests are not fed, they compete, and they leave with the feeling of a single team and a memory that could only have happened in Morioka. For incentive groups, that is usually the part that survives the trip.