The day we went though was Micah's last day, so we met up for an easy dinner the night before over Chinese food. It's tough seeing people go who you know you might have difficulty meeting ever again. You kinda just say good bye and "I'll see you when I see you," but in reality both parties know that when it happens, someone is going to be flying through a city and if no one flies through the other's city, it'll be difficult to coordinate a meeting.
Good times though. Wei and Steve also ceremoniously handed me the Bari Sugo (Level 3) Ippudo membership card. Basically between the three other people above, thirty some bowls of Ippudo have been eaten in the past three months. I wouldn't doubt if it had actually been more than that, but now it's in my hands to reach the official Ippudo membership card by consuming another twenty five or so bowls...
Yeah V and I like Ippudo, but that's still a tall order.
Yokohama the next day started past 11:30 AM since the kids were running a little late. Luckily, nobody was in a huge rush and the Shin Yokohama Ramen Museum wasn't far away. This place has been on my to do list for a while now, and we had to go as part of our Yokohama visit.
The museum itself is astonishingly small. There's a wall of displays and a time-line of how Chinese students brought it over blah blah. I couldn't read most of it and there was virtually no help for the non-speakers. From what I could gather, the ramen museum is a bit of a history lesson about how the practice developed and how the different styles evolved.
There section in the rear is a design your own ramen station where you can pick noodles, soup packs, and other toppings. You of course have to take the materials home and prepare it yourself, but it's interesting for those who want to try their hand at ramen making. The bulk of the ground floor space is actually a large gift shop.
The basement levels have been redesigned into a post-war ramen village and this section is what the ramen museum is really known for. A grand total of nine regional and landmark specialties have outlet like establishments in this space. You can enter the Ramen Museum for 300 Yen, which is actually expensive considering that they don't offer anything in the way of exhibits, but locals can buy three month and annual passes, purely to visit the downstairs food court. Cool design for sure, but how did it taste? Our plan was to try two or three shops with the mini bowls (definitely bigger than half bowls) each offered for 550 Yen.
First up, Taiho from Kurume. Our logic was that we might as well start out safe with a Tonkotsu broth and then branch out into other ones. Actually, I'm not sure how we decided on this one. It might have been me who chose it, but I refuse to take the blame for what we received below:
This murky broth doesn't look that strange, but the taste is as appalling as the odor in the store: a flavor best describe by Wei as "tainted pork." Tainted pork is a real food and it probably tastes like what we ate, but I don't think I'll be eating anything tainted again anytime soon. The store cleverly places the ticket machine outside where you can't smell what's cooking. We didn't really finish our bowls, so our ramen budget was immediately upped to three stores and we badly needed something else quick to wash out the taste.
Thus we headed to the safe looking Komurasaki from Kumamoto. The very standard looking tonkotsu den turned out to taste pretty standard as well. Not great but certainly not bad.
Nearly all of us went for the normal Tonkotsu. The broth was super light and the taste was brought up a bit by the floating black stuff which may have been pepper or sesame salt or something else. Not an overwhelmingly delicious bowl, but significantly more normal.
I played a little bit more dangerously and got the Miso ramen. Better than the regular tonkotsu in my opinion as the miso gave it an extra kick. I enjoyed the corn more than I have previously enjoyed corn in my ramen. Not bad at all.
Feeling brave again, we went upstairs to Ramen no Eki from Sapporo. Eki had had a promising vibe previously with the longest line we'd seen all day. No line when we hit it up, but the point cards on the table were another positive sign. Again everyone else chose the most standard option (miso in this case), while I went for the shoyu.
V had actually avoided the shoyu, because the picture of it on the vending machine showed a giant layer of oil on top. Too bad for her, she ended up with this:
This ramen was basically a miso swamp topped with a solid inch of grease. This may not have been a problem, but the miso part of it was ridiculously salty. My shoyu was salty too, but I found the miso nearly inedible. Nobody finished their bowl at our table, but every other table was eagerly scarfing theirs down. Do we just not have the genetic makeup to consume salt like the Japanese? Food in Japan tends to be pretty flavor heavy and V avoids a lot of foods just because she knows it will be too salty for her. I thought my ramen training had me at a higher salt threshold, but it looks like I was mistaken. V caught a glimpse of two girls drinking down the broth as we fled our table of barely eaten ramen. Ugh...
Eki was so salty that I probably drank four or five glasses of water. Eki was so oily that my water had a layer of oil on top from coming in contact with my lips.
It's extremely unfortunate that I have to advise you to skip the ramen museum. Shin Yokohama is a little out of the way, and the ramen museum is a bit difficult to find coming from the station. More than that though, there's no need to go and eat (or not end up finishing) what they have to offer when you have plenty of other options that are more readily available and certainly taste better. A dream dashed.
Then it was on to Yokohama to walk off the calories and forget our worries. Took the Minato Mirai all the way at its end at Motomachi Station to check out the Western beauty that the Bluff area of Yokohama is known for. There are a lot of old houses and parks to check out here, but we're from the West. I've seen some pictures of the famous houses and they don't look that different from the ones around my parents' house...
We scampered through France Yama just to get a feel, got to the top, and looked out across Yokohama. Frankly, there isn't too much to look at. I was wondering if Yokohama would be a bit like Chicago, regarded as the "Second City," but very much of a character on its own. Too bad that Yokohama really feels much more like an ugly stepsister. It's considerably industrial and considering its proximity to Tokyo, I feel like a lot of the attractions just naturally get exported to the bigger city. There are some nice things about Yokohama, but between it and Tokyo, it's kind of a no-brainer.
It was already nearly 2 PM, so we went back down the hill to check out Motomachi. Motomachi-dori is like the rest of the Bluffs and has that old European feel. It's also home to a number of boutiques and novelty stores that I have never seen in Tokyo. It would have been nice to window shop some things, but I don't think anyone was really shoppy and we had a date with Chukagai (Chinatown). Motomachi was interesting nonetheless.
Next stop was the other must-do (besides than the ramen museum, which isn't really considered a must-do anymore): Chukagai. We walked by Yokohama Stadium on our way and weren't able to figure out what team plays there. For some reason, I thought it might have been the Nippon Ham Fighters, but that was silly. Saitou went there! It's in Hokkaido! Yeah, so it's the Yokohama Baystars. Pass the stadium and walk a bit further...tada!
Chukagai! We all paused to marvel in its glory. Wei got distracted by something amidst marveling. Never have I seen a Chinatown with so many gates. There are like seven different gated entrances. The main street of Chukagai is lined with almost purely restaurants. If there had been more street food, I definitely would've eaten some, but for some reason the only things available were nikuman and chestnuts.
The side streets have a lot of additional crap, but we chose to stick with the main street and its food. Actually, our group was probably the wrong audience for Chukagai. V and I were heading to Taipei in four days and Wei was going to be in Shanghai the very next. A lot of things looked pretty decent, but the fact of the matter is that pretty soon we can just get the real deal.
V of course didn't refrain from sampling a nikuman, though. In her expert opinion, it was the second best nikuman she's had in Japan. Tasty. Chukagai really was a one-trick pony. Well maybe like a five-trick pony. Nikuman, chestnuts, restaurants, gift stores, and gift stores with pandas. Pandas, pandas everywhere. This of course spawned our collectively brilliant idea to invent a new character for China called Nihao Panda. Nihao Panda's gonna make us sooo rich.
Our last stop in Chukagai was the ominously named China Museum Food Entertainment. Way to come up with a name you can't possibly live up to. Yeah there wasn't really much to do inside. We entertained ourselves with local props as V browsed the Hello Kitty store.
V took her token snapshot with Kitty-chan and then we pretty much ran out of things to do.
Actually, there are other things to do in Yokohama, but we were wiped out. Nothing seemed remarkably interesting, so we headed to Minato Mirai to see what was available. Minato Mirai is the new city center which is basically a giant residence + shopping urban development. We got off the train and accidentally ended up in front of the Yokohama Museum of Art instead of the Landmark Tower.
A fortunate accident since we did get a decent view of the tower and with time to spare, we chose to hit up the museum. The Yokohama Museum of Art costs a palsy 300 Yen for students and houses a very decent collection of modern art. V and I spent most of our time on the couches, resting up, but we were able to enjoy most of the pieces. Particularly notable were the couple Salvadore Dali's that I feel like I may or may not have seen before in pictures. The Yokohama Museum of Art is totally worth 300 Yen, unlike another museum I know...*ahem* There was also a Degas exhibit going on, but 1200 Yen was too much for me to check out a Spanish artist I barely know anything about.
Having filled our souls, we set our bearings for the Landmark Tower, tallest building in Yokohama and home to the Sky Garden. The good thing about tall buildings is that it's pretty easy to tell that you're going in the right direction. Through the indoor mall known as Landmark Plaza, we got to our destination after dark and readied ourselves for Yokohama night views.
I'm a fan of city views at night, but Yokohama might be the one city better off peering out over during the day. Supposedly you get views of Mt Fuji and this and that, but we couldn't see any of that through the shroud of night. From up high, you really get a feel for how sprawling the city is even though it's home to 3.6 million people.
One final token couple shot and it was time to head back down.
Just kidding, here it is:
Out of things to do and a bit hungry, we headed back to Landmark Plaza to find something to eat. Everyone was in the mood for something light and cleansing, and so we all enjoyed the freshness of some soba.
In actuality, our motivation for visiting Yokohama was actually twofold, as V has a penpal of ten years there and this was to be there first meeting. The original plan was to meet him for dinner, but that sort of fell through, so we waited for him to show up at Landmark Plaza so we could grab some coffee.
A lot of readers are anticipating photos of their first meeting, but for some reason we totally forgot to take pictures. This just means that penpal man will have to come to Tokyo sometime. The two of them talked at a cafe while us three guys checked out the giant mall complex. Notably, we found a Snoopy store and learned all about Snoopy's homeless brother, Andy, and his fat and lazy brother, Olaf.
It's really too bad we didn't get that picture with the penpal, but I did go to the Pokemon center.
So this picture is like a consolation prize. Merry Christmas.
Tired, we went home and all passed out. Actually, I think everyone got untired after midnight or so and then just stayed up being unproductive. What else is new?
Next up: Tokyo Christmas (which is actually right now)
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