Saying my goodbyes in Japan was tough, but being able to go out and celebrate with friends (along with the hope that I’ll be back there in the not too distant future) made it a lot easier. For one of the many finales, I went out for ramen with Brian. We checked out Bassanova, where Keizo Shimamoto, author over at Go Ramen!, works. They are well known for their Green Curry Soba, which is creamy and spicy – ramen perfection. I also appreciate that they serve it in reserved sizes – it would be easy to gorge on a massive bowl, but the size keeps people coming back for more (and prevents them from becoming total fatties). Check out Brian’s photos here. Here is the last episode of Collabo-Ramen for a while:

Collabo-Ramen – Bassanova from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

On JET, my days started early and ended early – I was finished by 4:15 and had plenty of time after school to make dinner, watch TV, read and write. I could take my time. Moving to Tokyo, however, made my free time much more valuable. I spent more time commuting and had to work longer hours. For a long time my Tokyo life strategy was to eat meals as quickly as possible, meals that required little to no prep time so that I could get back to a productive activity. I am now a master of the 30-minute bowl of lentils and the 5-minute tuna fish sandwich. I have also eaten my fair share of bento.

As my time in Japan has started to wind down, I’ve found myself a little restless. I can’t really start or even continue many of my projects; I’m not working full time anymore; and I also feel a strong need to fill my Japan-sensors to full capacity before I disappear myself back to New Orleans. So I’ve been wandering a bit recently in search of small neighborhood restaurants – 食堂 or ramen restaurants, anything really. I’d always sought out great beer, but now I’ve been taking my time with food.

I have three trusty allies. The first is my map, which I wrote about here. I’ve had it for a long time but have never used it as thoroughly as Brian has. After hanging out with him a while, I’ve realized he carries it with him constantly, and whenever anyone has a recommendation for ramen or a museum, he marks it down on the map for future reference. Respect.

The second is Ramen Supleks Database. This I found via Ramen Adventures. Just plug in a station name and up pops a list of restaurants with reviews and pictures. Great Japanese reading practice. I’ve found a couple tasty places including an evil-good 家系 place in Omori and an interesting modern place near 戸越公園 – that gives you the full extent of my wanderings.

Another less reliable restaurant listings website is Tabelog. This site has more than just ramen, but it also has a bunch of restaurants that are promoted by ads. Basically you can always ignore the first two or three restaurants on any given search because they are ad-supported.

So my advice to Tokyo residents is this: Force yourself to explore the 20-minute vicinity around your apartment on foot. You might find a useful train line you never considered using before. Or a great restaurant. (Or at least a mediocre one run by really nice people.) Or just some cool neighborhoods that help you fill up your Japan sensors.

My parents were here for sakura season, so Brian and I took them to our final stop on Tokyo Ramen Street – Keisuke Nidaime. I do not recommend this shop if you have cats – you will leave covered with the delicious scent of shrimp and lobster, irresistible to most felines.

This was my second time at Keisuke Nidaime. The first time I had the lobster ramen, and this time the shrimp wonton. They are both amazing, and I recommend trying both. The lobster broth is slightly thicker. I think I’ll definitely be back one more time to try the “super-thick” lobster tsukemen.

CollaboRamen – けいすけ二代目 Keisuke Nidaime from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

1Q84 Vol. 3 is out! I have my copy reserved at a bookstore in Oimachi that opens at 10am, so I’ll pick it up there and then head straight to Café du Monde in Ito Yokado, which has wireless. I won’t be live blogging (already thing of the past), but I will try to tweet when my fingers aren’t covered with powdered sugar. Follow me @howtojapanese.

ジンギスカン =    

Genghis Khan =  

This inequality is only sometimes true; although, when it is true, it also holds true that ジンギスカン = incredibly tasty. Check out my review of Kitaichi Club, an Oimachi Jingisukan-ery, over at CNNGo Tokyo.

The Internet is divided on the actual origin of the term jingisukan. English Wikipedia seems pretty confident in its proclamation that the grill resembled the helmets of Mongolian warlords, but I couldn’t find any Japanese links that supported that point. A link provided by Japanese Wikipedia seems to suggest that Japanese chefs gave the cuisine a cool name so that they could deal with a surfeit of sheep. It sprung up in areas with lots of sheep – Hokkaido and other parts of northern Japan – and I can totally see some chef saying, “Where else do they have sheep? Mongolia? Well, hell, let’s call it Genghis Khan.”

Shop number three on Tokyo Ramen Street. Mutsumiya is a miso ramen restaurant from the small town of Tsukigata, Hokkaido. Until I started doing Collabo-Ramen, this is basically the only kind of ramen I ever had – thick, savory miso soups with bright yellow noodles and lots of garlic for flavoring. One of my friends on the JET Program theorized that miso is the least difficult ramen to mess up, which is why so many people like it. All of the other types of ramen are more subtle, and I never really bothered to seek out anything other than tonkotsu when I visited Kyushu and the occasional bowl at Ippudo in Tokyo. So Mutsumiya was very familiar. It was a solid bowl but maybe not all that spectacular or unique. Brian had their monthly special, which looked really good.

Collabo-Ramen – むつみや Mutsumiya from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

I went to the Yokohama Ramen Museum in the summer of 2003, and back then I didn’t know anything except that miso ramen was tasty as hell. I walked around the exhibits a bit, took a peek at the different restaurants that had set up shop in the museum, chose a Hokkaido shop that had miso ramen, and bought my ticket at the vending machine before sitting down at a table. When I looked down at the stub, it read 塩. My first reaction was Damn, that does not say miso. My second reaction was What the hell is that kanji? The staff answered my question with a はい、しおです and delivered my bowl just seconds later. I ate the ramen, but my heart wasn’t in it. I mean, salt ramen? What the hell is that? Ramen is already pretty salty, why would you want to make it even saltier?

Ever since then I’ve been biased against shio ramen. I never ordered it and never even bothered to figure out what the deal was. That is until last Friday, when Brian and I checked out ひるがお at Tokyo Ramen Street. Brian gave me the low down on what shio ramen is:

Collabo-Ramen ひるがお Hirugao from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

I think I am much better prepared to appreciate shio ramen now. Shio ramen isn’t necessarily saltier than shoyu ramen; it just uses salt rather than shoyu or miso to give the soup its punch. I still haven’t had a killer bowl of shio ramen, but hopefully I’ll be able to take a trip to Ganko in the relatively near future. Nate from Ramenate made their salt ramen sound extremely delicious. “Salt ramen topped with a layer of piping hot shrimp oil”? FUCK yeah.

My review of Musashi is online over at CNNGo today. Check it out!

Don’t forget my video review. I’ll post it again here:

Good Eats – Musashi from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

In Episode 2 of Collabo-Ramen, Brian and I go to Tokyo Ramen Street and check out the つけ麺 at 六厘舎:

Collabo-Ramen – 六厘舎 Rokurinsha from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

Check out Brian’s pictures and watch Episode 1 of Collabo-Ramen if you haven’t already.

Check me out at Japan Pulse again, this time writing about baumkuchen. I told my roommate I was writing about バウム, and she was like, バウムクーヘン? That was a なるほど moment for me because I had been saying it バウムクーチェン in my mind. I should really know better, especially since I learned the correct pronunciation of rauchbier from Japanese (ラオホ). It’s clearly just as difficult for Japanese to get at guttural German sounds as it is for Americans, maybe even more so. Reminds me of some passages from Chapter 8 of Don DeLillo’s White Noise:

I’d made several attempts to learn German, serious probes into origins, structures, roots. I sensed the deathly power of the language. I wanted to speak it well, use it as a charm, a protective device. The more I shrank from learning actual words, rules and pronunciation, the more important it seemed that I go forward. What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation. But the basic sounds defeated me, the harsh spurting northernness of the words and syllables, the command delivery. Something happened between the back of my tongue and the roof of my mouth that made a mockery of my attempts to sound German words.

He hires a German tutor named Howard Dunlop:

He said he was a former chiropractor but didn’t offer a reason why he was no longer active and didn’t say when he’d learned German, or why, and something in his manner kept me from asking.

We sat in his dark crowded room at the boarding house. An ironing board stood unfolded at the window. There were chipped enamel pots, tray of utensils set on a dresser. The furniture was vague, foundling. At the borders of the room were the elemental things. An exposed radiator, an army-blanketed cot. Dunlop sat at the edge of a straight chair, intoning generalities of grammar. When he switched from English to German, it was as though a cord had been twisted in his larynx. An abrupt emotion entered his voice, a scrape and gargle that sounded like the stirring of some beast’s ambition. He gaped at me and gestured, he croaked, he verged on strangulation. Sounds came spewing from the base of his tongue, harsh noises damp with passion. He was only demonstrating certain basic pronunciation patterns but the transformation in his face and voice made me think he was making a passing between levels of beings.

Maybe that explains why it’s so much fun to pronounce rauch accurately. Could also explain why rauchbier is so tasty. No real reason to post those passages other than that I like them and think about them when I try to pronounce difficult German words. I like how Japanese takes pronunciation of words straight from the mother tongue. I think many Americans, and perhaps I at one time, assumed that all loan words came from English – a crime which Japanese themselves are guilty of on occasion. Remind me to tell you a funny story about the word rendezvous sometime.

In other news, I have a review of Tea Market G Clef online at CNNGo Tokyo. I randomly came across the store while I was shopping in Kichijoji back in 2006. Kawasaki-san, the owner, is a really nice guy who speaks English in a quiet voice and is quick to offer his latest teas for sampling. I highly recommend the Waffle Sandwich set at the nearby Tea Salon. It’s the perfect portion size and an amazing combination of flavors – go for the bacon mushroom.