So we were told, I'll get to that later. Here a sarariman enjoys his lunch.
This guy was great at the slurping which I thought was to show appreciation but apparently is more about cooling off the noodles. Because the noodles cook in the broth it is important to eat them fast, it takes 3 to 5 minutes for these guys to finish a bowl. Which is good because the better places have lines outside.
Here blue and white collar alike line up for the top rated place in Tokyo, Menya Kissou. It was excellent. We had tsukemen (pronounced more like tskay men) which has become a big craze in Tokyo over the last few years.
They serve the noodles on the side with the sauce for dipping. At the end they will add some soup to thin out your sauce so you can drink it. You can also order a double bowl of noodles so you don't run out. The other question they asked us here is if we wanted the noodles hard (katame).
For the uninitiated, here is a bowl of ramen.
It's basically a pork and chicken broth, filled with noodles, and served with various toppings usually sliced pork called chashu which you see here.
Here is Kendra eating it at a place in the opposite direction of the craziness of Shibuya called Nagi.
Nagi (above) was featured in a recent New York Times piece on the popularity of ramen in Tokyo. It was very good, but a little too much of a young crowd, seemed like a number of couples on dates. Ramen should be more of a lonely man's quick and fatty meal, not so stylish like the ridiculous Ippudo which now has a branch on 4th Ave. in NYC.
Here is the more traditional way to eat it, like they might have it in Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu, which I blogged about a few years ago.
This is a cart (these stands are called yatai) outside Shinjuku station, which seems to get it's wood or charcoal from this guy.
Not that I'm against innovation. This place in a suburb of Tokyo called Setagaya-ku makes a Ramen in Thai green curry flavor seen here.
The place is called bassanova for some strange reason, I guess the Japanese connection to Brazil. Here you can see the traditional set up with water, chopsticks, jars of garlic and ginger, tissues and a rag to wipe down the counter. The guy behind it doesn't have to talk to you because there is a machine where you do all your ordering.
To learn more about the history of ramen, because that is what I'm into after all, I traveled to Yokohama to the Ramen Museum.
Yokohama was the first place to be opened up after Perry's black ships and the treaty of Kanagawa (that is the name for the whole area of Tokyo Bay or Edo Bay where Yokohama is situated). In 1859 when the port of Yokahama was officially opened to foreign trade the first people to come in large numbers were, naturally, the Chinese. They brought with them Ramen, which until the 1950s was known as Chinese Soba.
This museum attempts to recreate that era, when Japan emerged from U. S. occupation and became a growing industrial giant with a consumer culture and the fast food that comes with it.
Yes it's a little cheesy like a Vegas hotel, but the attention to detail in the phony back alleys like this one make it a unique experience, with broken down period motorbikes, wooden sandals neatly placed outside the doors, and even black and white wrestling matches playing on the TVs inside the homes.
Here we had real authentic ramen from the era, very greasy and heavy. They say a ramen cook might ask you in some shops if you want extra back fat in yours.
That brings me to our last stop, a shop, believe it or not, run by an American Ivan Orkin. He is trained at the Culinary Institute of America in classic french techniques but chose to move to a suburb of Tokyo and run a small ramen shop.
Here he is posing in front of it for us. Being a native New Yorker he is a talker and taught us a lot about Ramen. He is a celebrity in food crazed Japan, being featured regularly on TV. He seemed happy to see us, as he gets a lot of tourists but almost all of them are Asians.
He cooks traditional Ramen like Shio or salt Ramen, the most popular style in Tokyo. Having worked at Mesa Grill with Bobby Flay in the early 90s however, he does a Chipotle spiced Ramen with cooked down eggplant and tomato.
It was really great, without the overwhelming chipotle flavor you can often get with an unskilled chef. He even convinced me to eat the egg which I normally don't like. He told us that Japanese eggs are more natural than there American ones and therefore full of flavor. I would agree, but I wouldn't say it is the best part like he did.
He also does great side dishes like this pork and tomato over rice, and he had a very good salty, sour lemon ice cream. He says ice cream is one thing he misses in Japan (along with mofongo believe it or not).
Also we aren't drinking so that limits it a lot. Here is the golden gai, an area in Shinjuku full of small bars that looks a lot like the Yokahama ramen museum's recreation of the 1950s.
I did play video games. This guy is playing a game where you use trading cards as your controller. They somehow interface with the game and I'm pretty sure it can tell what cards you are deploying. For instance, at points he would turn the cards over.
I still think it is 1982 and am playing pengo.
They had a great selection of old games put into these newer machines. Including one of my sega favorites from 1985, fantasy zone.
The other thing we did was watch baseball.
Not only little league baseball. We went to a Yakult Swallows game. It is sad that they can't fill this stadium that was built for the 1964 Olympics. Only the bleachers had any people.
One of their fun rituals is to hold up umbrellas when a home run is hit and it is raining baseballs.
This was the most interesting thing I could find to eat. Then I bought these for these two kids and had them pose for the blog.
