One of the more unusual sandwiches unique to Japan is the 焼きそばパン yakisoba pan. As you can imagine, the main ingredient is yakisoba noodles, cooked with savory, tangy sauce, and sometimes extras like pork or beef, cabbage, and optionally topped with red pickled ginger, Japanese mayonnaise, and aonori seaweed. To make it, you simply cook up your yakisoba and stuff it into a buttered コッペパン koppepan, which is like a hot dog roll.

In their latest commercial campaign, instant noodle maker Nissin's yakisoba brand U.F.O., which recently features super concentrated sauce and mayonnaise, has been recommending consumers to make a "U.F.O. Monster Yakisoba pan" using their product. In the commercial below you can see the original Kamen Rider actor Hiroshi Fujioka making one as a variation of Kary Pamyu Pamyu's hit song "Fashion Monster" (UFO Monster) plays in the background.

We were curious to find out how this "monster sandwich" would turn out, so we decided to try it out for ourselves.

Making a "U.F.O. Monster Yakisoba pan"

For starters, we needed to make some yakisoba.

Here's our package of 日清焼そばU.F.O. 極濃モンスター焼そば nissin yakisoba yūfo gokunō monsutā yakisoba (Nissin Yakisoba U.F.O. super concentrated monster yakisoba), on sale in Japan since June 27th, 2022.

This is the sandwich we're going to make!

Like many instant noodle products that don't involve soup, the container is designed so that you can pour in hot water from one end, then drain it from the other once the noodles are cooked. Then you add any dry and liquid seasonings that came with it, mix well, and you're done!

Since most of our readers have probably made instant noodles before, we'll cut to the chase and show you the cooked yaksioba noodles after mixing in the sauce:

The 極濃 (gokunō | super concentrated) sauce colors the noodles a dark shade of brown. The noodles also contain pieces of cabbage as well as pork.

The pungent yet inviting aroma made us hungry as we mixed it in...

Although the picture on the package seemed to use normal shokupan slices, we weren't sure how liquid the noodles would be or if they would be able to handle the quantity of noodles in the package, so we opted for thick slices to make sure our sandwich wouldn't fall apart. We bought some premium shokupan milk bread made with Hokkaido wheat, toasted them on one side, then buttered them up with unsalted butter (made with Hokkaido milk).

After that, we piled the yakisoba noodles on top of one slice, put the other slice on top, and pressed down. It was already quite the monster of a sandwich with noodles coming out on all sides. Carefully holding it down, we sliced it in half with a bread knife, turned the halves on their sides and drizzled their special "concentrated mayonnaise" that came with the package. Finally we were done...

Behold, we have created a monster!

We couldn't drizzle the mayonnaise in thin parallel lines like it does in the picture on the package, but we think this makes it look even more monstrous!

And it was about time. We were famished!

TIME TO DEVOUR!!

This was better than we expected! The noodles were firm and well flavored. The super concentrated umami-rich sauce kicks the 'Worcestershire' factor up a few notches and really packs a punch. Combined with the super concentrated mayonnaise, which is tangy and rich with egg yolk flavor, they make a tasty monster tag team rampaging in your mouth.

Add the soft and sweet shokupan and butter to the mix and you have an unstoppable combination. Like a ravenous wolf, we were almost going to grab the second half of the sandwich when common sense finally kicked in.

In case you're wondering, the noodles themselves have 3.16 grams of sodium and 802 calories and the whole sandwich the way we made it is about 1500 calories (1200 if you're using thin shokupan slices and no butter).

If you're ready to tame the monster, why not give it a try?