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.

how to get an apt. in japan

I ran across a link to an excellent guide to apt. hunting in Japan (for foreigners).

music gigs!

Took me three years to stumble across this web site listing music gigs in Tokyo. Now I need to find people interested in checking them out.

This blog brought me to the above website, and I found the blog on gaijinpot.com.

New Year, new resolve

Resolutions:
* exercise (nice and vague; I'm thinking either hip hop or belly dancing)
* study kanji (pass at least level 8 of the kanji kentei, hopefully get up to level 6 by the end of the year)
* pass Sun Certified Java Programmer Exam 5
* learn to cook 1 new dish (not ambitious at all; I learned one last year! Maybe that chinese potato dish... Or scallion pancakes)
* sleep semi-normally (I sense I am out of luck tonight)

Happy New Year

Shanghai steamed dumplings from Din Tai Fung in Taipei. The best so far.