Kansai Ramen Derby on November 29, 2015

Kansai Ramen Derby 2015 was held at Kyoto Racecourse.

35 popular ramen restaurants entered the Kansai Ramen Derby for five days in total, and collaborated each other to set up 10 individual booths in a day.

I went to Kyoto Racecourse to join the Kansai Ramen Derby last month! It was held in two parts: the first race was during November 21 to 23 and the second race was during 28 to 29. Different ramens were served on each race. It was neccesary to buy a ticket for a bowl of ramen for 800yen. We joined the second race on November 29, and I had three varieties of ramen. I was sooooo stuffed! 

There is no need to say this, because ramen is the world-famous food now, but ramen is Chinese soup noodle. The roots of ramen lie in China; however, ramen as we know it today evolved independently in Japan. Now ramen is one of the representative Japanese-style food. Almost of all Japanese people love ramen! Never in my life have I heard of people who don't like it. 

The actual horse races were also held same as usual.

By the way, do you know which part of areas is called Kansai? Even Japanese people rarely recognize it, including me.

The word, the Kinki Region, is often used as same as the Kansai Resion; however, it 's actually not the same. The Kinki Resion refers to the following prefectures: Osaka (大阪), Kyoto (京都), Hyogo (兵庫), Nara (奈良), Mie (三重), Shiga (滋賀), and Wakayama(和歌山). 

The Kinki region

Quoting from: http://matome.naver.jp/odai/2140188973364228301

On the other hand, the Kansai Resion originally refers to the western part of the three Japanese historical checkpoints in Mie(三重）, Gifu (岐阜), and Fukui (福井). But now, Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Shiga, Nara, and Wakayama are widely recognized as the Kansai area. In fact, the Kansai region is defined as that it consists of 10 prefectures: Fukui, Mie, Shiga, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyogo, Nara, Wakayama, Tottori (鳥取), Tokushima (徳島), by definition of the Foundation for Kansai Region Promotion (関西地域振興財団）.

The Kansai region defined by the Foundation for Kansai Region Promotion.

Quoting from:  http://matome.naver.jp/odai/2140188973364228301

In this connection, Kansai direct (関西弁) is generally used inside the Kansai region. To be precise, each prefecture has each slightly different dialect, but roughly speaking, the intonation and the ending of a word of Kansai dialect is commonly characteristic.

Let's stop here for the time being. I'd like to talk about the Kansai dialect in detail maybe some other time. 

Bye now!