From the outside, this little ramen shop looked like it had tales galore to tell.
And it did. Or more accurately, its elderly owner did. Opening the restaurant at the relatively sprightly young age of thirty-eight, she has been working behind the counter ever since. For fifty years to be exact, doing two shifts a day, six days a week, with no thoughts of retiring just yet.
Ron Ouwerkerk says
Very nice. What kind of ramen did she sell? One of the interesting things I learned years ago when I visited Japan is that miso ramen, shio ramen, shoyu ramen are regional and ramen shops (generally) only sell one type, not like here where they sell all types. Tokyo, though, had lots of ramen places that sold all the different kinds (inlcuding cheese, which I never tried) so maybe this regional separation is fading away.
Lee says
To be honest I don’t eat ramen all that often, so I’m not that well up on such practices and traditions. We thought this was more a teishoku place, but ramen is her main lunch dish, so I had miso ramen and gyoza. The latter she made while sitting down in the corner. But she also had the likes of tan-men and moyashi ramen. Nothing fancy, just good, simple food.
Linda says
She is great, of course, but I want to know how long did you have to wait for that perfectly color-coordinated umbrella to walk by and how wet did you get? 🙂
Lee says
Haha, amazingly not long at all. We came out after lunch and I spied the woman walking towards us. But having walked about in the rain all morning, I was already soaked…
Jenn says
Oh my she’s incredible and I just love her smile! 🙂
Lee says
She was absolutely lovely. Quite shy in her way, but more than happy to chat when we asked her a few things.
YTSL says
I love that you noticed that shop and went inside to get the proprietor’s story. Thanks for sharing!
Lee says
You are very welcome.
That’s always the method for trying new restaurants or bars. Seek out somewhere that looks old and interesting, then give it a try. This one we’d actually spotted the day before, but frustratingly it was her one day off. There was just enough time to pop back the next day though, so we did. Needless to say it was definitely worth the effort.