naginicai ランチ(Nagi Nicai Lunch in Shinjuku)

Nagi Nicai is a very relaxing place in the evenings. Almost like an izakaya. But for lunch, it's a busy tsukemen shop.

All they have on the menu is tsukemen. You can choose regular noodles, or the shops homemade momen. Feeling adventurous, both Daniel and I went with the unknown.

A nice touch is the bowl of pickled ginger to cleanse your palette.

I had the meat version, with an excellent piece of grilled chicken.

The momen noodles are wide and long. It's like eating lasagna noodles. A unique bowl indeed.

The taste was good, but a bit hard to eat. If I came back for lunch I'd get the regular noodles.

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太助家 (Tasukiya in Tsukishima)

太助家

I walk by this shop every Friday on the way to one of my lessons. But every week I am full of food from the lesson previous, where after teaching English to my student, I eat Thai food with her and her grandkids. Not a complaint, but the free meal puts a damper on any ramen adventures.

A change in the schedule this week left me with room for a bowl, so I checked it out. Tasukiya serves up thick noodles and a thick, fishy broth.

There was a lot of fish flakes floating in the soup. I didn't drink the soup, as it was a little heavy.

It passed, but to be honest, you should really come to Tsukishima for the monja. Or Tsukishima Rock.

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平九郎 (Heikuro in Saitama)

平九郎

Winter sees a lot more days off, and I decided to join a kojomoe adventure with some friends. Kojomoe (工場萌え) translates as "factory love". The idea is to go to industrial complexes and take photos. There's a lot of books, sites, and clubs who do this sort of thing on a regular basis.

Anyways, my new giant-underground-water storage-flood prevention room fan friends and I were in the mood for ramen. Every 7-11 in the country has a copy of the local Ramen Walker magazine, which we used to make our choice. Being out in the far reaches of Saitama, our options were limited. And most places in Saitama seem to be closed from around 3pm to 6pm. Heikuro was the closest ramen shop that wasn't closed.

Four styles, I went with the spicy tonkotsu.

It was good. Standard, with a spice level that was fine for me, but trouble on one of my friends.

By the way, from 4pm until 6pm on weekdays, you can get unlimited kaedama (替玉). So basically this is an all-you-can-eat ramen shop.

The high school kids who came in at the same time took full advantage of this. One of them was up to 800g of refills by the time I left.

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