Tokyo Ramen Street

Abe Hiroshi pimping ham at Tokyo station.

Just outside the Yaesu exit is the ramen street.

I love ramen too.

I went for tonkotsu ramen Oreshiki Jun despite the fact it didn't have a one hour queue. It was actually not bad. Not Ogi omfg I could die now but its close in taste. Recommended.

Opposite the Tokyo Ramen Street is the Character Street which includes shops like Shonen Jump. Ggrr, only the Akagi shirt has LL size left.

Hhmmm.

Gomenne Seishun komanjyuu.

Wtf. Tamagochi is still alive?

Hello. What is your name?

Jump Shop at Suidobashi.

Less Slam Dunk selection than the Tokyo shop.

As much as a like Pepper Lunch, 40% increase in price the last few years means I should look for an alternative.

Random Japan pictures so far

Koihime fighting game tournament at Shinjuku West. KSK, my favourite 3rd Strike player was there so I guess Kao TV was involved. Due to the tourney, the Uru4 machines were barren so got many 1v1 games in without interruption. I am so out of practice....

Izakaya with touch screen ordering.

Chicken skin skewers!!!!!!! Yum.

I went to the wrong Aeon cinema looking for Kenshin Kyoto Taika Hen.

With Ogi now gone, good old Fuunji in Shinjuku is my favourite. Yoshi's tsukemen can't even touch this stuff.

Chigasaki station where I went for the Kenshin movies.

Tonkotsu Taizen in Akiba. Very meh.

45 minute queue at Menya Ittou in Shin Koiwa. During this time I decided to look up Girl's Bars and Snacks in Shin Koiwa.

Not as good as Fuunji but pretty good.

Salaryman Kintaro ramen. Lol.

Desperate to find a good Hakata Tonkotsu ramen place, I went to Goten in Yoyogi. Wtf Thai style ramen?

You can see the chart on the left telling you the various hardness you can choose for the ramen. I always go for barikata and kata for the kaedama.

Went for chashumen. Not bad, except the onion aftertaste is too strong. Definitely has the Hakata taste. Anyone who says Gensuke tastes authentic hasn't been to Fukuoka. Sadly, its not close to being as good as Ogi.

Finally I found a decent priced place to drink in Tokyo! Snack Hotaru in Shin Koiwa! 5000 yen for two hours all you can drink shouchu and all you can sing. No stupid service charge and consumption fee.

The trade of is two older ladies and a young girl but all I need is good conversation and karaoke. If you can score over 85 points in karaoke, you get a bottle of shochu which one dude did.

Customers are all old dudes so everyone's singing enka so I stuck to old songs. Went pass two hours but mamasan said she would only charge me for two hours since there weren't many customers and one old dude bought me a whiskey drink. Nice place if you want value for money. I definitely will be back.

Rurouni Kenshin : Kyoto Taikahen and Densetsu Saigo no Hen

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RIP Tonkotsu Ramen Ogi とんこつラーメン荻

Fuck. Did some research and the shop closed in June. Wtf. The best ramen shop in the world closed five months ago on June 20 which was two weeks after I left Japan. If he has told me he was closing shop I would have extended my stay.

The closest thing to matching Ogi is Tanaka Shoten which is way out in Odaiba and the last time I went wasn't so good.

The best thing about Ogi was the soup. No other tonkotsu ramen place had that thick but not watery/oily soup base. It was fucking heaven.

I'm so depressed. This is worst than Coco Ichi stopped doing tejikomi chicken katsu. Btw, they are now doing tejikomi menchi katsu which is not as good.

y

I desperately need to find another tonkotsu ramen place which is as good or else I'll go crazy. There is now a really big hole in my stomach, I mean heart.

If you click the link on top you can find more pictures. Seems like the dude went back to Hakata. I need to find out wtf hia new shop is and take a fucking 7 hour train there juat for the ramen.

I am back!

Went to tonkotsu ramen Ogi and wtf. The shop name is Menya Mazehoru. How can the best ramen I've ever tasted not be there? This is a fucking outrage and I am super depressed.

Best possible news is that its just a name change. Worst news is that the dude sold his shop. I guess I'll find out when it opens on Monday.

The new radio kaiken where the time machine from Steins Gate crashed. Personally, I preferred the old one cause it felt old. This is too homogenised and clean.

If senzu beans actually worked, do you think they would cost this much?

Went to Yodobashi looking for this new Japan travel sim which is 500 yen more expensive than b-mobile but has double the limit at 2gb. Unfortunately no nano sim version and I didn't want to risk DIY without a sim cutter.

Went to Saitama to catch up with a friend and it was a toss up between izakaya and yakiniku. We ended up going to Futago where the seat covers could be opened ao you could store your bags and they gave you a plastic warp for your mobile phone.

Best potato salad I ever had and the horumon was to die for.

I'm pretty sure I died eating the sukiyaki karubi. Fuck should have had one more.

Tamagawa Kuyakusho of the Dead Eps 1-3

I was hoping this would be watchable but unfortunately Tamagawa Kuyakusho of the Dead has turned out to be a dud. Zombie stories are usually character driven by putting people in extreme situations. Tamagawa Kuyakusho is set in a boring world where zombies are slow and an everyday part of life that no one is afraid of.

Actually, I thought the uber slow zombies were an interesting idea cause Tamagawa Kuyakusho could be a civil servant comedy (ala Dandarin) with the special welfare division. Alas the characters in 3 episodes are so fucking cookie cutter boring that I couldn't even bother to finish retiming the Japanese subs.

Maybe the writing will pick up in Episode 4 but the writer had three episodes to establish something interesting for me and completely failed. Tamagawa Kuyakusho had every reason to be a watchable show but falls completely flat on its face. Do not watch this.

Nobunaga Concerto Ep 3

So episode 2 ended with Oguri Shun declaring that he was going to try to live in the warring states period and being in possession of the Japanese history textbook. This is the equivalent of having the sports almanac in Back to the Future. Nobunaga had the perfect handbook as to how to united the country, though the history book lacks in detail of how to win.

And what does Oguri Shun do in episode 3? Does his run away schtick again so he can meet up with A-chan who's 'acting' is probably suitable for this country girl. Yes, stuff happens in the first half of episode 3 that does not flow/make sense from the end of episode 2 just so they can have some 'comedy' with Nobunaga's vassals looking for their lord and Oguri Shun having a 'touching' story with meeting peasants from another territory.

I know its a comedy and I'll even accept Oguri Shun being able to converse with modern Japanese but when scripts lack basic common sense, they have lost my attention. He was running around most of episode 3 not wanting his head to be chopped off when he had the very thing that tells him how not to have his head chopped off. I like the intro music but Nobunaga Concerto is the very antithesis of a smart comedy.

Ten no Hakobune Eps 1-3

Corruption has always been a staple of WOWOW doramas as much as the triumvate of the prosecutor, police and reporter main characters. Ten no Hakobune, a 2012 dorama is also about corruption but its about something I've never heard of before; Official Development Assistance.

Have you ever wondered why rich countries like to give foreign aid? We know that countries don't go to war if there is nothing to be gained. ODA is a roundabout way for politicians to get money from their national coffers and there are a select few who are able to participate in getting a share of the handouts.

Mizuno Miki plays the daughter of a poor farming family wrecked by a major earthquake. She manages to go to Todai and has to work as a hostess to make ends meet and support her parents but she gets wind of this ODA business and with the help of Miyazato (Ihara Tsuyoshi from Hatsukoi)  finds a job as a consultant and gets involved in the business of international money laundering.

I really like that Ten no Hakobune is not preachy. Sure, its got an idealistic reporter but it also shows the exhilaration of pulling of deals and bribing the right people. We see Mizuno Miki coping with the dirty world that she descends into but it poor countries, its a way of life and if someone has to profit from this, it might as well be her. I really like Mizuno Miki's character in this one. She feels real and complicated. We know tragedy occurs which is one of the usual end results of corruption but at the same time, I can't help but root for her character.

Solid 3 episodes so far. Huge thanks to Avallac'h for subbing this. No idea how it got under my radar two years ago. There's no good heavy dorama this season that I've seen so far and jdoramas are always in need of more real life stuff with a good story and characters. Very watchable from me.