April 15, 2006
Sex, Ramen, and Long Tang
The second day of my trip to Japan, I was surrounded my more neon then ever in my life. Tokyo is like nothing I have ever seen before. I had a nice hotel (thanks mom) and was rather tired. I thought I'll go for a walk and find some food. I started walking around west Shinjuku. I had a map but couldn't really find anything. People were out and having a great time. My eyes were wide open and just amazed at everything I saw. Of course I was hungry, but where to eat. There are so many restaurants. I didn't yet know that I probably would have been happy with 90% of the restaurants. So I kept looking for THE place. I ended up going to Kabukicho - the red light district. A large man with a thick African accent followed me through the crowd. He kept saying " Come on man you know you want it - the girls here will do anything". It creeped me out some - probably the most of the whole trip. While weaving through the strip clubs and love hotels, I saw a simple ramen place. Ramen was perfect.
I eat ramen in New York every once and awhile and it is always fine, but I was really looking foreward to having it in Japan. And boy are there a lot of ramen shops. The Japanese love these chinese noodles in broth. The place I stumbled into was almost empty and I guess this helped ease the intimidation factor. I sat at the bar (most ramen places look like the one in Tampopo) and through broken Japanese ordered shoshu (soy sauce based) ramen with roast pork, pork gyoza, and a beer. The cook and waitress were joking with me. It was exactly what I needed. This random ramen joint had better ramen then any I had tasted in NY ( hmm maybe not Momofuku ) and the gyoza was hand made. Much better then I had ever had. I didn't care that this was not even close to the best ramen I was going to have on the trip or that I wasn't eating something crazy or new. This meal showed me that it was going to be an exciting month.
Click below to see some more pictures of Long Tang.
