Some ramen bowls from my recent Nov/dec trip to Japan

I’ll try my best to outline my thoughts and experiences with my recent trip to Japan (second trip) and the bowls of ramen that I enjoyed. I really tried to go for one bowl a day, although to anyone that has travelled there themselves, this can get challenging with time constraints and (dare I say it) becoming a little bored of eating ramen everyday. I like that there exists a many range of unique bowls that differ in terms of toppings, noodles, broth, and tare, so this can help keep monotony at bay. However, even as a larger bloke I find it difficult to consume two hefty meals a day in Japan, stomach’s are useless over there.

Additionally, most of these places were found with a combination of Tabelog, TRY (Tokyo Ramen of the Year), and user u/Namajapan. With that said, here are the shops I visited in order of photo appearance:

Ramen Nagi:

I landed into Tokyo at about 8:30pm. I was staying in the Shinjuku area, and didn’t get to my hotel room until about 11pm. The obvious choice for my first meal at this time of the night was Ramen Nagi. I was on the fence about niboshi style ramen, although this was fantastic, I wish I ordered more chashu. Don’t get one of the egg’s sitting in jars on the bench top, in my opinion, they weren’t very good and the bowl can do without them. Definitely a place to return to over and over again.

Ramen-ya Toybox:

A bowl I’d been dying to try. My last trip to Japan had me getting food poisoning after a late night karaoke session (from McDonalds of all places), so my stomach wasnt able to consume anything heavy. I was first in line on a Saturday at about 10am, I wasn’t sure if they would open since it was some sort of public holiday I believe. No one was lining up although I stood my ground. Finally people started coming, there were around 25 people behind me when they finally opened.

This was my first ever shoyu ramen. The shop almost had an intimidating air to it, for some reason I felt nervous sitting there, like I was being watched by other patrons. I loved the egg here, it was smoked. I had no idea how to handle the long, continuous piece of menma, it wouldn’t break apart when I chewed at it, so I ended up eating it all in one, lol.

Miso Mendokoro:

A suggestion made by Namajapan and TRY after I proclaimed my love for miso ramen after trying Santora. Nothing to say here, it was good. I couldn’t finish the broth.

SAN Tora:

Okay now, last time I was in Japan, I tried SAN Tora and was absolutely floored by it. I thought it was the best thing I’d ever had. I don’t know if my palate has changed or what, but I just can’t get behind miso as much. I think I have to be in the mood for it. I love the alkaline noodles here and the sous vide chashu is really good. But the miso broth is just sickly and I found both miso mendokoro and san Tora hard to stomach and finish. I stupidly ordered the extra large one here, sorry SAN Tora for wasting the broth 🙂

Trick Ramen:

Made a little day trip to Yokohama. My choices for the day, in the area, were NIBOSHIMANIA, Umaiyo Ramen, and Trick. I spent some of the morning eating some fantastic street food in the Yokohama Chinatown, so I wasn’t overly hungry. Therefore I opted for Trick, the lightest option out of the three. I’m glad I did, I got the special bowl with chicken breast, thigh, chashu, chicken meatball, and a wonton. My favourite topping was the chicken breast. This was my number one bowl of the trip, really loved it. In my opinion the broth was even more impactful than Toybox’s. I’m not a ramen expert so my opinion probably means nothing hehe.

Matoi:

Courtesy of Nama. Delicious bowl. Not much to say other than it being a dried squid bowl, which I understand is pretty unique? I could’ve kept drinking the broth all day. Everything else was just fine, not really noteworthy in my opinion. I remember this bowl having lots of menma.

Menya Kintoki:

I was in the area for the day and really wanted to try a shio style ramen. Delicious bowl, I think they use Himalayan salt and you can really taste it. I got the special with a prawn and chicken ball, and wonton. The chicken ball adds much needed umami to the bowl. I would return for sure although I prefer shoyu.

Butanohoshi Ramen, Osaka (I think I translated it correctly):

Tried coming here last time I was in Japan, although when I arrived they were randomly closed for the day for ‘employee training’. We opted for Ramen Kozo instead, in my opinion, these bowls were extremely similar from what I remember, I think I read somewhere last year that the owner of Kozo may have trained under the owner of Butanohoshi? Anyway, the line up system here was unique, they had an initial line outside, which then transferred into a line inside, in the airconditioned warehouse style shop. Delicious, gravy like tonkotsu broth which I stained my t-shirt with on my first slurp, and spent the remainder of the day in Osaka with tonkotsu shirt… in my opinion, you could avoid the line here and just go to Ramen Kozo for a similar experience.

Menya Shichisai:

I didn’t plan on coming here, although it happened to be on my old Tokyo guide for my first trip. I was in the area and was hungry, so I went to the closest shop with a good rating. I opted for the niboshi ramen again. This was a unique shop, they make the noodles in front of you for each bowl, producing a chewy and snappy bite. Not much else to say for this one.

And that’s all unfortunately, I had a few others I wanted to try, mainly some tsukemen and Iekei style tonkotsu. I also wanted to go back to Toybox Ramen and compare it against Trick. But alas, I spent my final days in Tokyo frequenting izakaya and eating whatever esoteric dish’s the chef’s would throw at me.