I just wanted to write a few more details about the greatest bowl of ramen I have ever eaten in my life. On January 2nd, I was in Fukuoka for about seven hours as I waited for my Shinkansen back to Nagoya. Being the New Year's holiday, most establishments were closed, and so the place was in many places like a ghost town. But I was hungry, and I wanted some tonkotsu ramen, which Fukuoka is famous for.

So after walking about an hour from the ferry terminal downtown, I came upon this place, which had a fast-moving line outside. I saw that the price was 650 yen for a bowl of ramen. I also noticed that just around the corner was another open ramen shop, completely empty, and selling their noodles for 380 yen a bowl. Obviously, there was something to the first place.

So I waited in line. While waiting in line, I read the establishment's long-winded policy, written on a wooden plank above the door. (Hey, I am getting a little better - I only had to look up two kanji to read it). It basically said they are open 24/7/365, and they were dedicated to providing the highest quality ramen to their customers. Also, their standard is to serve the ramen within 33 seconds of placing the order. So you buy a ticket from the shokken (food ticket machine) from the outside (I also bought an extra order of pork and a 生ビール - draft beer). It took about 15 minutes to get through the line to the inside. The place was dark with red curtains all over the place. As we get to the end of the line, a shopmember gave me a slip of paper with about ten different criteria for my ramen - spiciness, garlic, ginger, and so on, and different levels for each one. I didn't have time to read or understand the whole thing, but I was able to circle the middle one, or "standard" for each criteria.

  
When it was my turn, a blue light shone on a seating board up on the wall, and I was directed to my seat. It was just like a peep show or something - there was a red curtain in front of me, so I wasn't allowed to look into the innards of the restaurant. I set my tickets and order slip down, and they were quickly snapped up. Definitely less than 33 seconds later, I was presented with the most heavenly bowl of broth and noodles I've ever experienced. Absolutely every single aspect of the noodles were perfect - temperature, consistency of the broth (not too fatty, not too thin, significant spiciness), a bit of pickled ginger. By the way, this was Hakata ramen, so the noodles are much skinnier than you usually see in Japan. Adding to that, the medallions of roast pork were divinely cooked, as if they waited until they extracted only the top 1 percent of the pig and threw the rest away. Literally, I was crying, it tasted so good. And although the serving size was maybe 2/3 the size of the usually hefty bowls of ramen you get in Japan, that in itself was another characteristic of this meal that made it perfect. It was exactly the right amount. I swear, I was thinking about how good this ramen was for the next two hours walking around the city. It may not even have been the best ramen in Fukuoka, as far as I know, but for this amateur ramen-lover, it satiated me in the best way possible. Most unimaginably highly recommended.
Rating: 6 Godzillas

OK, so here are my pictures from Korea. I've divided them up by days:

Friday: Nagoya to Fukuoka, Fukuoka to Pusan:

Saturday: Pusan tower, Jagalchi Market

Sunday: Kyeongju

Monday (New Years): Haeundae Beach, more wondering around Pusan

Tuesday: Ferry from Pusan to Fukuoka, some time in Fukuoka, the best ramen I've ever eaten plus more

I will write some more separate posts about each of these. The weather when I went to Korea was great. The first day was pretty cold, but after that, it warmed up and was tremendous. One difference I really noticed was customer service. In Japan, even if I go to a convenience store in the middle of the night, I'm welcomed with open arms. In Korea, even in all the restaurants, the reaction was more like, what the heck are you doing here? But anyways, you do get a lot of food, like 12 plates of stuff with every meal, no matter what you order. Also, I can read Hangul (it had been four years since I had been to Korea, but I did remember it), however, that doesn't help me at all, since I have no idea what anything means. Fukuoka was a real pleasant surprise, a little robot store, and like I said, the greatest ramen in the history of the world. I'll have a few more posts about all of this later, but for now, please enjoy.

Christmas Day here was just a regular day, so I just went to work. Although there are a couple of kind of traditions here for that day. One is , that it's traditional for couples to go out on dates, kind of like Valentine's Day. So that was out. But another one is that many people will go to KFC (pronounced kentakee) for dinner. So, for my lunch break, I did just that. And the weather was nice enough that day, that I walked down to a nice quiet park and ate outside. Pretty pleasant actually.

Oh, here are a couple more interesting pictures from my keitai. Here's Yamaguchi-san, our assistant manager, shredding $50 bills in the shredder:

Here's a robot from the robot museum dressed in a Santa hat inviting passersby:

Oh yeah, this weekend I'm taking the boat to Korea for a few days.

Last Saturday, we had our Christmas party, at the Indian Restaurant Puja, of course. It was pretty fun, but it seemed to end way too quickly, and there was no karaoke into the night. I did dress up like Santa, though, something I hadn't done in, like, at least 15 years. All in all: fun.

This weekend started off badly. The power adapter for my laptop failed and I had to go down to Osu and find a new one. The search seemed hopeless at first, but I was really relieved to find one that had just the right specs and fit perfectly, in this grungy old electronics store down the alley. It would have been bad, because I depend on this thing for making my lessons, and I really don't feel like going back to doing them manually.

Then, today I went to Ichinomiya City ( 一宮市 ) for a free Japanese lesson. Every Sunday, about 50 volunteers get together and teach Japanese to whoever wants a lesson. Out of maybe 40 gaijin there, there were only two Americans, so that was very nice. My teacher for the day turned out to be an 18-year-old high school student, so it was a little different. It was a very good lesson, though, because even though she could speak English, she really did her best not to use any during the lesson. My only complaint is that it was pretty loud in the room, so my meager Japanese listening skills were really tested. This is a really good deal, and next time I think I'll bring some Japanese articles in to discuss. After the lesson, there was a potluck party, and we did bingo and played some games. It was ok, except there was this one song "Banzai" by Misa, a repetitive song in and of itself, which they literally played ten times in a row. I got really annoyed, which was great because I haven't been annoyed like that in a long time, so I was due. Umeda-san, this guy I met a couple of weeks ago at a Nagoya International meet-up, was one of the volunteers and was kind enough to give me a ride up there. 梅田さん、ありがとうございました。

Oh, so last weekend was probably the last chance to see any 紅葉 (kouyou), or autumn leaves, around here. So I did manage to make it down to Heiwa park and take a few pictures. Very few. I'm very disappointed in the amount of pictures I took of this beautiful aspect of Japan. I did see a few leaves in the last few weeks, though, just didn't take enough pictures. For some reason, it feels a lot different than the leaves in, say, New England. Not better, not worse, just different.

On Saturday, went to Osaka for Masatoyo Yamano's wedding. It was quite a spectacle. The reception was at the Ritz Carlton, probably the nicest hotel in western Japan. Then, the second party, or nijikai was at the Hilton. There was a very successful attempt to get the groom drunk, and some other strange things going on involving half-naked men. Look at the pictures I got here. Also, Rob took some good photos here on his flickr page.

This past weekend, my friend Rob came to visit me here in Nagoya from San Francisco. We did stuff like visit Nagoya Castle and go to the Robot Museum. So here are the pictures. It was fantastic having a good friend visit. Who's next? (The wedding in Osaka is in the next post).

This past Thursday was a holiday here in Japan, Labor Thanksgiving Day, which has no relation to the American Thanksgiving. It also happen to coincide with the calendar date of the American holiday (although it was a day beforehand, of course, with the time difference.) So John, another fellow Aeon teacher (actually, my predecessor at Sakae school) did an absolutely awesome job of hosting seventeen people for American-style Thanksgiving here. My friend Rob came out from San Francisco the night before, and brought sweet potatoes and burritos (half of one I ate the night before and the exquisite memory of it still lingers). The Thanksgiving feast was amazing - Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, shepherd's pie, pumpkin pie, and even more. It was perfect. Thanks John. After that, there's only one thing to say: おなかがいっぱい.

So I still have a ton more pictures from Rob's visit - we went to Nagoya castle and the Robot Museum and of course the wedding in Osaka. Stay tuned for those in the next few days.

I decided to try something a little more minimalist, so here it is. I hope it's ok.

Yes, we lost the game this weekend. It sounded like a great game. I was really excited about it, but I realize now that these things are just a game, though. We did already win it all back in 1997, so I'm fine if that's the end of it. But if we get another chance to play against Ohio State, that's ok, too. It all seems to pale in comparison to what's really important in life. And right now, for me, that seems to be what my real passion is (learning Japanese). And maybe, perhaps, someday, finding my significant other here. So close and yet so, so far.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2OXQh3duI&watch_response

Well done. Good luck this Tuesday, America.