I'm finally counting down the final days of my stay here in Japan, which is a little less than a week and time is speeding up day by day. Towards the end of March is when things really started picking up when we started traveling the Kanto region and making the last days of our rail pass count back in Kansai. Weeks went by so fast and I barely had enough time to sit back and edit all the pics in a timely matter due to the constant last minute traveling. Up until now, I still have gigs of pictures from traveling weeks ago that I still have to edit and post which I will catch up to in a timely matter.
As much as I have to catch up on, first things first - finish my ramen. While you folks get to kick your feet up and skim through my posts, I'm constantly confining myself as much as possible to give you guys the juicy details of my trip. Don't take it personally, I'm just hungry and I need some carbs to fuel me through the night.
I'm at the finishing stages of packing up the clothes I never wore and cleaning out my hard drive from 2013 and there is nothing that can keep me away from diving face in first into a bowl of pork fat. While in Tokyo, I met up with a very good friend of mine, Daichi, who is bouncing around Tokyo coordinating events for J-Wave Radio.
Back when we were working at a local Japanese fast food restaurant chain, frying his Ray Bans in tempura oil, we always clicked on our taste of hip-hop. From Cali to Japan, we had the same taste in music and it's because of that that we've maintained this connection. That, and the love of ramen.
It's pretty well-known that ramen is the staple food for Japanese people, but I have never seen someone like Daichi, that can put slurp up ramen noodles like this dude. It's like his life support, this guy makes me look like a kindergartener at slurping my noodles. If "slurpage" was a sport, you best believe this guy is the Olympian of inhaling noodles.
If you didn't know, slurping loud is a sign of respect of how delicious the noodles are. So you can imagine that when Daichi walks out of ramen shop, people are on there knees bowing is gratitude that he enjoyed there ramen so much. Nothing like dusting your shoulders off to a normal lunch with friends at your local ramen shop, this guy makes it look so damn easy.
The following morning, after our failed attempt the night before, we finally made it to his recommended ramen spot down a few block from his place. In Japan, you can find broths likes pork a.k.a. "tonkotsu", miso, or soy sauce a.k.a. "shoyu" to fill your bowl of noodles. But this spot specialized in ginger broths and another interesting element, aiyu, a river fish not common in most ramen noodles, was superb in taste and authenticity. Seats about 8 lucky people, but your chances on weekday during lunch are a lot better than night time when the real show begins. All I can say is that the hiring sign posted on the counter asked for one specific qualification: MUST BE ABLE TO DANCE (roughly, but accurately translated in Japanese).
So if you please excuse me, I will proceed to slurping this bowl of noodles before I can even think about settling down again to give you folks more pictures. Nobody likes a grumpy blogger.
いただきます！
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