Sōmen

Sōmen (素麺) are very thin white Japanese noodles made of wheat flour, less than 1.3 mm in diameter. The noodles are usually served cold. The noodles' diameter is the chief distinction between sōmen and the thicker wheat noodles hiyamugi and Japanese wheat noodles udon. Sōmen noodles are stretched when made, as are some types of udon noodles. The dough is stretched with the help of vegetable oil to make very thin strips and then air dried.

Sōmen are usually served cold with a light flavored dipping sauce or tsuyu. The tsuyu is usually a katsuobushi-based sauce that can be flavored with Japanese bunching onion, ginger, or myoga. In the summer, sōmen chilled with ice is a popular meal to help stay cool.

Sōmen served in hot soup is usually called "nyumen" and eaten in the winter, much as soba or udon are.

Nagashi-sōmen

Some restaurants offer nagashi-sōmen (流しそうめん flowing noodles) in the summer. The noodles are placed in a long flume of bamboo across the length of the restaurant. The flume carries clear, ice-cold water. As the sōmen pass by, diners pluck them out with their chopsticks and dip them in tsuyu. Catching the noodles requires a fair amount of dexterity, but the noodles that are not caught by the time they get to the end usually are not eaten, so diners are pressured to catch as much as they can. A few luxury establishments put their sōmen in real streams so that diners can enjoy their meal in a beautiful garden setting. Machines have been designed to simulate this experience at home.

S-Men

S-Men is the name of a group of fictional characters, a supervillain team in Marvel Comics.

Fictional team history

The S-Men are a group of supervillains who were formed by a clone of The Red Skull to serve as his version of the X-Men with the main objective to destroy mutantkind. The team is made up of people who have all suffered atrocities at the hands of mutants during their life, including those who have seen their families slaughtered by evil mutants. With the help of Red Skull and Arnim Zola, these people have gone through lengthy and painful genetic alterations involving mad science and magical artifacts in order to gain the powers they now possess (though some may have been born with their powers and others, such as Dancing Water, may in fact be mutants themselves). They first appeared after the Avengers vs. X-Men storyline where they attacked Rogue and Scarlet Witch near the grave of Professor X. The S-Men defeated Rogue and Scarlet Witch and managed to make off with Professor X's body while taking Rogue and Scarlet Witch as their captives. The S-Men held Rogue and Scarlet Witch as prisoners of Red Skull as he fused part of Professor X's brain with his own. Rogue managed to absorb some of Dancing Water's powers to escape and look for Scarlet Witch. Red Skull used Honest John to take the form of Odin in order to get Thor to help the S-Men attack the mutant race. Red Skull even used the Goat-Faced Girl to negate Wolverine's healing factor so that Thor can land a cataclysmic blow on him. Scarlet Witch and Havok assist Captain America in fighting Red Skull until Dancing Water got him out of there. Afterwards, Captain America and Havok search for leads on where to find Red Skull and the S-Men.