o_o

About.com's Japanese Recipe of the Week is "Bukkake Udon".

Bukkake?!?!?

According to Jim Breen's WWWJDIC, the verb bukkakeru means:

打っ掛ける; ぶっ掛ける 【ぶっかける】 (v1) to dash (slosh) water (or other liquid) on a person or in a person's face

Some of you may be familiar with the slang (Internet?) usage of the stem bukkake, referring to a genre of pornography. I actually wrote an explanation of it just now, but this is a family website (except, of course, for all the cursing), so I deleted it. Go look on Google if you're curious.

Why is there an udon recipe called bukkake udon? Is the idea that when you eat the noodles, the soup splashes you in the face? I think, given bukkake's other meaning, they ought to change the name...

...then again, this could just be one of those cases where what was once a normal, innocent word has been co-opted. Maybe bukkakeru was a completely harmless word until recently. In which case, bravo, bukkake udon. Be proud!

(I would really like some books on Japanese etymology. Actually, I used to think it would be fun to focus my research on that, and teach a course, and write my own books. Heck, maybe I still think that.)

Edit 2005/08/02 6:15 pm: Found a good explanation here.

Indeed, bukkake is more commonly used in Japan to describe a type of dish where the toppings are poured on top of noodles, as in bukkake-udon and bukkake-soba. Here the word bukkake is used in an adjectival sense to give the impression that the soup is fresh.

So it's kind of like...yakitate!