Coffee and Raamen....

How cool would that be, Seattlites? Nutrition and your jump-start all in one. Like steak-flavored Q-tips. (An old joke by....? Goes like this: "Hey, I like meat. I like clean ears: Steak-flavored Q-tips!")

Check out this great website: Coming Anarchy for coffee raamen! Looks like there's more than a full cup of java after all the noodles are slurped up. Wonder what the cook does with the pork.

Ando Packs It In.

Our man, the inventor/creator/innovator of instant raamen and Cup Noodles, Momofuku Ando, has decided, at the tender age of 95, to retire. Egads! Is nothing left sacred in this world when a man has to give up his sole love and joy just because he's pushing the century mark? Actually, according to my sources, he wants to retire. Wants to spend more time doing the things he really enjoys doing, no doubt, whatever they may be. After spending time in jail for tax evasion and coming out nearly penniless and definitely jobless at age 48, he turns hard noodles, a packet of spices, and hot water into a billion-dollar empire. Not too shabby. I hope he gets to spend a few more decades in leisurely retirement knowing that without him hundreds of thousands of mostly male college students would've starved to death.

Kitakata Kura Raamen

Kitakata Raamen
Originally uploaded by Tedori.

Today's lunch spot. The food was both good and not-so-good. It tasted good at the time but later kept coming back to me and I felt heavy all afternoon. Did it have just a smidgeon of MSG? I wonder because MSG (called Ajinomoto, after the company that sells the most of it) gives me a headache and I had a small one for a short period after eating here.
However, you can choose your noodle here: thick or thin. I took the thick and they were quite tasty. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday gyoza is half price and, anytime, if you order rice when you order the raamen, it's free. Otherwise, I think it's 200 yen.
If for any reason you're interested in owning a franchise, check out this Franchise site. But if you're more interested in finding how many stores they have and where and you want to practice your Japanese reading ability, check out this Kitakata Kura Raamen site. (I discovered, for example, that it is from Kitakata City in Fukushima Prefecture.)

Kitakata's interior

Kitakata's interior
Originally uploaded by Tedori.

Right after lunch, the cashier is grabbing money left and right. I got there at 12:40 and left at 1:00. It's clean and welcomes children, not a common sight in most raamen places. It also had nice music that wasn't too loud. The workers, on the other hand, had to yell whenever a customer came in, (いっらしゃいませ!) or left (ありがとうございます!), and when they put in an order (野菜 一丁!), all of which is common in most sushi, raamen, yakitori-yas and other cheap traditional restaurants. The other thing was, every time someone cleaned a table they yelled "Table Number 5. Clear!" And I kept thinking, what is this an aircraft carrier? So, needless to say, the help spent a lot of time yelling.
This cashier cleaned tables, took the money, and seated people. I wonder if he was the owner/franchisee or just hired help.

Menu on the Wall

Menu on the Wall
Originally uploaded by Tedori.

Now you can read and practice your Japanese while you read. The first three kanji from the top are the name of the store: Kitakata. 喜多 is Kita. 方 is kata. Kitakata =喜多方. The Happy Way (?) Below the 喜多方 is raamen (ラーメン). The third raamen from the right is onion raamen, (ネギ = Negi = leek). The first one is the Kitakata Raamen shop's specialty, which I didn't try. It's the cheapest at about 525 yen but it has four or five slices of fatty pork. The rest are about 700 to 900 yen. I tried 味噌 (miso) 野菜 (yasai = vegetables) ラーメン which is the 7th from the right, almost directly under the light. You can just make out that it costs ¥714.
(By the way, prices used to NOT include the 5% sales tax. Now they do. So a price that used to be ¥200 is now listed as ¥210. To make it more convenient for shoppers to figure out how much they'll really have to spend. I have a feeling Women's Groups had a big influence on this decision.)

Kitakata's Miso Vegetable Raamen

Kitakata's Miso Vegetable Raamen
Originally uploaded by Tedori.

Two pieces of pork and more vegetables than most raamen. I liked it. The only thing about the restaurant I found interesting was the bill came before the food, so you knew how much your meal cost before you even got your meal. This raamen cost 714 yen (what's that in real money? $6.00?) The veggie raamen had bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, cabbage, mushrooms, and miso. With thick noodles.

Two Instant Noodles:

Type Instant Noodles (Hakata & Vegetarian)
Originally uploaded by Tedori.

Hakata & Vegetarian

The vegetarian noodles cost ¥126 while the Hakata noodles cost about ¥140. To be honest, the Hakata noodles tasted better but maybe that's because it is more the taste I expected. However, the soup (dashi or だし or maybe even 出汁)of the vegetarian noodles tasted better. Figure that out. In fact, the dashi was the best tasting dashi I've had so far. The vegetarian noodles claimed to be shoyu aji (しょう油味) but it tasted more like miso.

As instant noodles went, they weren't half bad. Or is that not half good? Is the glass half....?

If you want to see more about the vegetarian raamen or, if you really, really, want to practice your Japanese, you can go to Sakurai Foods in Gifu, Japan for more info OR you can go to their webpage (which is back towards the middle of this sentence) to practice reading Japanese.

This company uses organic ingredients so we all won't die of something... chemical poisons? ... quite as quickly. Not only is it vegetarian but it doesn't contain any fish or meat, either. (You'd be surprised how many 'vegetarian' products use animals or body parts - one instant noodle uses cow brains. For taste, they said after it was discovered the cows they used were livid. Completely mad.) As the Sakurai Foods webpage says: 肉・魚を使用していません。かんすいは使用していません。Clear enough, eh?

Lost ...

...in My Own Mind

Have you ever gotten in your car, on your bike, or jetski to go over to Suzie and Bill's house to watch the new Reality TV show and scarf down potato chips by the ton and, instead of turning left to Suzie and Bill's house you turned right because your mind was switched on by hearing a certain song or seeing something that reminded you of someone and you just automatically drove through town to your favorite raamen shop but realized half way into your miso raamen with a side of gyoza that you were supposed to be at Suzie and Bill's house watching a reality TV show? Well, that's what happened to me today except for the Suzie and Bill and television. And the potato chips.

I was going to find a raamen shop I hadn't been to before and check out their raamen. I looked at their menu: they had five raamens but four sets (A: raamen and gyoza, B: fried rice and gyoza, C: raamen and fried rice, and D: two things which I've forgotten.) I ordered B. Halfway into it I realized, 'Hey, this isn't raamen.' I almost ordered a bowl of raamen just to taste it, but I didn't.

Below you will see pictures of that shop wherein I planned to have raamen but ended up chowing down on some delicious fried rice and gyoza. For about $8.00.

The Pot

The Pot
Originally uploaded by Tedori.

This is the big pot into which are put the raw raamen noodles. There must be four or five baskets where the noodles are put in and the four or five employees watch them, pull them out on time, and replenish the water when needed by turning on the faucet you can see just to the left.

Chef at Work

Chef at Work
Originally uploaded by Tedori.

Here is the guy who made my lunch. Besides him, there were three women cooking, serving, running the register, and cleaning up. He' sitting just in front of the register, by the way.

Here the chef is on his post-lunch break rush break. He's watching the Seattle Mariners (Ichiro) vs New York Yankees (Matsui) game (Yankees were ahead 6-4 when I left) on a TV that's bolted to the wall just below the ceiling and he can't hear it where he works (the exhaust fan is too loud) so he sits out in the dining area. At least when most of the customers are gone, he does. In a lot of raamen places the cook will come out front to sit and watch TV or eat. I've seen some who have a beer when there aren't too many customers. And usually they smoke, but this guy isn't. It's a pretty clean shop with a nice surprise in the back.

The B (non-raamen) Set

The B (non-raamen) Set
Originally uploaded by Tedori.

Okay, I spaced out and ordered fried rice and gyoza instead of raamen. I also got a bit o'soup and a baseball game on TV. The fried rice was great - spicy but not too spicy, hot but not too hot. The gyoza was the same. Next time, though, I'm definitely going to try to remember I'm in there to taste the raamen, not the rice.

The Surprise Garden

The Surprise Garden
Originally uploaded by Tedori.

Here, hidden in the back dining room area (seats about 10; the whole place seats about 25), is a nice little garden that really sets the place apart and makes eating there more enjoyable. It takes you out of the busy-ness that is your daily life and gives you a little nature to contemplate. I don't know how many people actually looked at it while they snarfed down their noodles, but it is nice to look at just the same. It's also very small, as you can see.

Thumb and Raamen Shop

Thumb and Raamen Shop
Originally uploaded by Tedori.

A raamen shop named 千門天 which, when translated by the Romantic writer would be called "Heaven of a Thousand Gates" or "A Thousand Gates to Heaven" but it is also a homonym for "specialty store" (専門店). Both are pronounced "sen mon ten."

So far it is not a chain store. It only has this one log-cabinesque outlet. The taste is... not the best, not the worst, pretty average. (Excellent photographic skills, by the way, by including my thumb in the picture.) Taken at 10:50 AM, a little early for raamen but the store is open.

Raamen Shop, Two

Raamen Shop
Originally uploaded by Tedori.

The 専門店 and 千門天 shop from a different angle and without the thumb. A car is substituted for the thumb in this photo adding, I suspect, an air of realism (?) and a tree for foreground emphasis.

I will attempt to make it to this shop and get interior shots if I can.

HachiBan

HachiBan
Originally uploaded by Tedori.

One of the many successful chains of raamen restaurants in Japan and other places (Thailand, for example.) They have about 120 stores in-country and franchises are available. If you have the $300,000 necessary. (By the way, the hobby of the man in charge of franchises is gardening and golf.) This photo was snapped at 6:00 PM. Notice the lack of cars in the parking lot (and no, there aren't more hidden off to the side.) It's too early for dinner for most people in this burg; they're on their way. In about 45 minutes this place will be packed. (The cook is trimming the shrubbery in her spare time.)