There are a few little ramen shops near our home and I wanted to take the kids to one so they could experience REAL ramen--not the dried stuff found in America that has no nutritional value. We pass this one all the time, it's on what we call the "shopping street" very close to our home.
On either side of the door, we noticed little bowls full of salt. Remember that in the Shinto religion, salt is used to purify. We looked it up when we got home and discovered that salt will sometimes be left outside of houses in little piles generally to the right of the door (and sometimes also to the left) so that people who pass through the door are purified. We also found that salt piles outside restaurants are to encourage the arrival of rich and noble customers, since long ago wealthy people traveled on horseback and horses love salt. We are not the rich and noble customers that this restaurant wants, but maybe we were a little purified as we walked in.
In this ramen shop, just inside the door is this vending machine type thing where you insert some yen and then push a button to order. Your change will be dropped into a dish along with a ticket. You give the ticket to the waitress, and then sit down. She will give the order to the cook.
The cook will make everything in the kitchen which is in the same room as where the customers sit. Wish we could see what he was doing, but the high counter and the stacks of ramen bowls were in the way.
I didn't really know what I was ordering, I just pushed some buttons on the machine and ordered five different bowls of ramen. My purpose for this "field trip" was to show the kids that ramen can be cooked in many different ways, but no matter how you cook it, it's not like what we eat in the states. It's a main staple for the Japanese, and is misunderstood by people outside of Japan. Some of the ramen bowls came out with seafood, some with pork and soft-boiled eggs. One was a little spicy. One order came with two bowls. One bowl contained cold noodles, cold pork, and some seaweed. The other bowl came with hot broth and onion. You were supposed to put the cold meat and noodles in the hot broth before eating. The only reason I can think of for this would be to prevent the noodles from getting soggy before you eat them all?? All of the ramen bowls that we ordered had vegetables in them such as green onion, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, onion, and seaweed.
Ramen bowls are huge--and I didn't think the kids would be able to eat a whole one if I ordered a bowl for each kid. (take home boxes are not done in Japan--if you can't finish, you leave the food) We asked for some smaller bowls and shared the different ramen dishes. This allowed the kids to try different kinds as well. I also ordered a plate of gyoza for the kids to eat.
Mid-way through the meal, Audra was really getting the hang of chopsticks! She has been practicing on and off, but she figured it out while eating at this ramen shop. Now we need to get Nathan able to eat with them....
The noodles are eaten piping hot, and you are supposed to eat them quickly or else they soak up the broth and get soggy. Because of this, it is considered normal and polite to slurp as you eat noodles. It helps to cool them down and, considering their length, it makes them easier to eat. Up to the bar, there were a lot of Japanese people eating their ramen, and we could hear them slurping loudly.
For the first time in weeks--the kids got full! I stuffed them so full of noodles, they were almost rolling out of there. We thanked the cook and bowed as we left.
We stopped at the candy store just a few shops down from the ramen shop. We have found this place to be the cheapest place to buy snack food and finger foods for Kirstin. What the Japanese consider to be "candy" really isn't what Americans consider to be candy. These poor people really don't know what chocolate is! This store has fun and interesting little crackers and cookies that we get to snack on or take with us on our adventures. Kirstin really likes some raisin crackers and asparagus biscuits that we get here for her. We can also find Pocky, different flavors of Kit Kats (strawberry, dark chocolate, and green tea--haven't tried the green tea but the others are really good), and ChocoPies here. I gave each of the kids 100 yen to spend here buying a treat for themselves. They had fun looking through all the different snacks in order to decide what they wanted to get.
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