支那そば 天風 - Tenpu, Higashi Washinomiya

徳つけ - Toku Tsuke, ￥700

     It's unfortunate, but sometimes a trip out to a ramen shop can be met with disappointment. I don't mean whether you like it or not but whether you can actually eat or not. 

    Tenpuu, just a few minutes west of Higashiwashi Nomiya station, was the culprit this time, although closing for the purpose of trying to perfect their ramen was a perfectly acceptable reason.

    So it would have to wait for another time which isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world when you live in a city with 5,000 or so ramen shops. We eventually made it back almost 8 months later...

    Yet another of the ever popular tonkotsu-gyokai variety tsukemen. This one was probably more fishy than some of the others I've tried. But it was definitely worth the wait, although it's not as though I abstained from ramen for the duration so there wasn't in fact any waiting at all. 

    Now I know that a visit to these depths of Saitama is unlikely (2 stations before Ibaraki and 3 before Tochigi) but it's a great little place and you might also find one of the best onsen in Kanto out there...

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京めん 壱慶 - Kyomen Ikkei, Ueno

味玉ラーメン - Ramen w/ Egg, ￥800

    If you haven't stumbled upon this page or read about ramen before, you're probably aware that different areas of Japan have different styles of ramen. Some areas even have more than one! In saying that, today's ramen was Kyoto style, which differs from the image of Kyoto as the subtle, traditional home of Japan. This was a greasy tonkotsu-shoyu type ramen.

   Overall it was a pretty average bowl of ramen. This is reflected in the often empty counter while the masses queue outside Musashi Bukotsu which is located just across the road. This is probably made worse by the fact that it is quite a large ramen shop. 

    There was nothing particularly memorable about it, apart from being a little spicy, but it wasn't the worst in the world. I think the midnight closing time might attract the after drinks crowd when it doesn't really matter what your ramen tastes like.

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