The Best 50 Restaurants (all genre, mostly washoku) in Japan. Tabelog, Japan’s most popular online restaurant listing, recently released a curated list of the 50 best in Japan. You may recall that I recently wrote about their 50 best ramen, a post that can be seen here. Well, I’m almost finished with the ramen list,…
蓮華チャンス 蓮華チャンス What do you get when you cross an Australian professional wrestler with Japanese schoolgirl cosplay? Photo used with permission from Ladybaby’s official site. Official blog here. You get Ladybeard! And what do you get when you cross Ladybeard with the newest genre of Japanese junior idol heavy metal music? Photo used with permission from Ladybaby’s…
Osaka Ramen Expo 2015 I seem to be visiting a lot of these expos lately, despite my general ambiguity to ramen events. It’s cold out, this place is a 40 minute drive from central Osaka, and ramen served in a plastic bowl tends to add a lot of meh to an otherwise good bowl. But…
Simply Ramen A Complete Course in Preparing Ramen Meals at Home The landscape of ramen cookbooks (in English) is a rather barren field. Apart from Ivan Ramen, most tend to educate on how to take a cheap, store-bought package of instant noodles and reform them into something tasty. This is all well and good, but…
Fukuoka Ramen Show My work had me in Fukuoka for a day, and it just so happened that the Fukuoka Ramen Show was happening. Score! I’m usually not so hot on these events, as the quality of the bowls is all over the place. Taking time off to visit them is hit or miss. But…
2015 Tokyo Toy Run! Every year, my motorcycle friends, many of whom join the Ramen Riders adventures, team up to do a bit of charity. Toy Runs happen all around the world, and we are happy to be doing one in Tokyo. A Toy Run is a bunch of motorcycle riders collecting toys and donations,…
高田馬場ラーメン女子大作戦♡ My first day back in Japan, and I was able to catch the tail-end of the Takadanobaba Girl’s Ramen Week. Five lovely ladies collaborated with five awesome shops to make their own creations. Ramen is historically a male-oriented food, but in recent years the ladies have made it hip to slurp. My timing was…
ラーメンアメリカン I spent three weeks having a little vacation from the craziness that is Japan. And though I really only wanted to eat at three ramen shops, I ended up with a few more. Some were amazing, and some were pretty bad. But in the end, I think America is starting to push ramen in…
さよなら、くるり As of September 1st, 2015, Kururi is closed. I braved the line on their last day, a line of 40 people that took about two hours, to slurp it one last time. Kururi, for me, is a very important shop. When I started this site, back in the end of 2008, the only resource…
the RAMEN BOOK The Ramen Book is another bilingual guide to ramen in Japan, albeit a much broader guide than my own book, 最強アメリカ・ラーメン男 東京 極ウマ50店を食べる. While mine is strictly a guide to 50 shops in Tokyo, The Ramen Book brings you in slowly; sort of a ramen 101. It covers the basics, with great color…