movie reviews

For some interesting movie reviews, check out QuinnDuk at rottentomatoes.com. This part made me laugh out loud.

Greg Kinnear: He's such an interesting guy. He has this very boyish, friendly appearing face, but he plays such obnoxious characters.

Completely accurate, no?

However, I preferred Little Miss Sunshine over The Departed, both of which I watched on a flight.

a different kind of ramen

After a long hiatus, back to one of the three themes for this blog: ramen!

めん徳 二代目 つじ田(mentoku nidaime tsujita) is a shop located in 小川町(Ogawamachi) near 新御茶ノ水(Shin Ochanomizu) in Tokyo.

This may be the best ramen I've ever tasted. It's completely different from anything I've had before. The specialty is the つけ面(tsukemen) for 780 yen, where the noodles are served separately from the soup and you dip the noodles in the soup before slurping them up.

You squeeze the little slice of lime over the cold noodles and then gather a bunch up to dip into the surprising soup. The lime makes it a little tangy; a shocking flavor for ramen, but it's absolutely delicious. The tanginess is refreshing amidst the typical salty, oily yumminess. I can't even recall the flavor properly; it's not like tonkotsu or soy sauce or salt ramen. From reading other reviews it appears to be a mix of three types of soup (the reviewer called it triple soup-like). My friend liked the noodles in particular, but I found the soup and the meltingly tender pork the real winners. The pork comes in rectangular slices and is very tasty. I neglected to take pictures of the pork this time, but I will be back!

samba carnival asakusa

By request, a picture of Tokyo (albeit atypical). Every year there's a samba carnival in Asakusa; there's a large Brazilian population here (many of who are of Japanese descent). I went last year; it was a lot of fun, but far tamer than Rio! People are more content to sit than to dance.

look, I'm a spam blog

Had to delete cookies before I could get the word verification graphic to appear. That's a bit of a showstopper bug. Effectively prevents people from posting.

Nothing much going on here; I'm still battling the epitome of entropy that is my room. And I need to do taxes. So I'll give you a picture from NY.