It’s not a gamble when all of the outcomes are delicious.

When you’re having trouble making a decision, the easiest way to solve the problem is to just flip a coin. Unfortunately, that only works when you’re picking between two options, so it can’t help you with more open-ended problems, such as the dreaded “What do you want to eat for dinner?”-“I don’t know. What do you want to eat?” conversation loop.

But here with a quick and effective solution to that dilemma is Japanese artist and Twitter user Kanaiga (@shiragaigarashi), creator of the Six Noodles Dice.

▼ Not only are there six dice in the set with six sides each, the name is also a pun. In Japanese the word for “noodles,” men (麺) is a homonym for the word for “sides of dice” (面).

So how do they work? First, there’s the Genre Determining Die, which has the kanji character for “noodle,” 麺, written on one of its sides. The others each have a picture of a different kind of noodle: ramen, soba, udon, yakisoba, or Western-style spaghetti. Those five types of noodles also all have their own die, each with five different ways to prepare that specific type of noodle on it.

▼ Genre Determining Die on the left, individual noodle dice on the right

So, for example if you start by rolling the Genre Determining Die and it comes up “ramen,” next you toss the ramen die, and if you roll “tonkotsu” (pork stock broth), then you’re having tonkotsu ramen for dinner. Other two-roll possibilities you might arrive are tsukimi soba (soba noodles with an egg dropped into the piping hot broth to cook), niku udon (udon noodles with strips of beef or pork), spicy pepperoncino spaghetti.

▼ This combination is spaghetti with tarako (cod roe) cream sauce.

Alternatively, you can skip the Genre Determining Die roll if, say, you already know you’re in the mood for soba, but you can’t make up your mind about what kind of soba to eat.

All of the possible combinations are tasty but simple Japanese staples, so there’s no need to worry about rolling up a recipe you can’t handle as long as you’ve got rudimentary cooking skills. And if you’ve got zero cooking skills, you’ll still be OK, as the possible combinations are dishes popular enough that you can easily find instant and premade versions at convenience stores, so as long as you can boil water or turn on a microwave, you should be good to go.

If Kanaiga’s name sounds familiar, you might be remembering her from the awesome takoyaki boat that embarked on a river cruise in Chiba Prefecture last month. While that was a one-time event, though, the Six Noodles Dice will be available as capsule toys in June, priced at 300 yen (US$2.40) each, helping us decide what to eat through the summer.

Source: Twitter/@shiragaigarashi via IT Media
Top image: Twitter/@shiragaigarashi
Insert images: Twitter/@shiragaigarashi
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Follow Casey on Twitter, where he’s ready to skip right to the soba die.