Cooking udon noodles!

So, I love udon noodles, and making them for myself. However, I've been researching a few things about dashi. I'm a bit clueless about it! I'm not sure if I'll be able to get my hands on this "katsuobushi" I've heard about, so I tried boiling nori that my Mom picked up to make sort of a broth, and eating the udon noodles in the broth with the remaining nori. I definitely like how it tastes, but I want to know more about making food with udon noodles, and I also don't feel that what I made could really be called a varied plate of dinner. So, basically, I'd like the food savvy people on EoFF to help me out with cooking udon noodles by giving me their recipes!

(Also, what exactly is tempura? I don't really understand what it is, but my Mom made it once, and it was amazing! Now she's scared to cook it, though, because she had a stomach flu at the time she ate it last. :p)

Pfft, I like udon noodles every way I've made them. I've never saved a recipe though.

Udon is best at the shabu shabu place by my house. You make all your meat and stuff and then after the waitress comes and turns what's left into udon soup and it is amazing.

Man, I completely botched dinner yesterday. It's all because I stupidly assumed soba noodles would taste similar to udon noodles. That is to say, I thought they wouldn't taste disgusting! And then I didn't really like my kombu dashi thing going on. The tempura mushrooms ended up nice, though.

I think I'm going to stick with my fun nori + udon thing.