The Ramen Nazi

I never really liked eating Ramen in the U.S. I guess i've had too many bowls of "Instant Ramen" or "Cup of Noodles" as a kid that it tainted my opinion of Ramen.

After Ueno park, we decided to have Ramen for lunch. This is a picture of the poster outside that shows what it looks like inside the place. You sit in a "cubicle" of sorts to eat your Ramen!

The atmosphere kind of reminds me of the "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld. You go in, get your food, enjoy it, and get out. No putzing around allowed!

I didnt want take many pictures inside because I wasn't quite sure if I should be doing it or not. But it was so unique I had to grab at least a few shots!

It was really dark, and i was being surreptitious by not using the flash. I'm surprised these shots turned out. Kudos to Panasonic's image stabilization. For you photo people these pictures were taken using 1/8 sec shutter speed all hand-held!

To the right is a picture of the cubicle. You have a little water spout to the left if you're thirsty. The little bamboo thing in front slides up and they pick up your meal ticket (I'll explain this later) and slide your meal through here.

The red curtain is always there -- so you can not see who is serving you your food. Apparently you are supposed to concentrate on the food and eating, and not be distracted by anything else!

To the left is a sign which is attached to every cubicle. Check out the pictures in Red. No smoking! No Cell Phones! And definately NO TALKING! :)

They really go out of their way to make this a personal / individual kind of thing. This posed a problem for us non-japanese speaking tourists. We have 1 guy in our group that speaks fluent Japanese. Usually he orders everything and does the communication.

Because of the way the seating is done, and because there is no talking, we were not allowed to communicate with each other. The ordering was slightly complicated as well because you can choose: How thick you want the soup; How well done you want the noodles; if you want pork or not; if you want green onions or not; How spicy you want it, etc. You really can customize your meal to your taste!

This is how the line works. When a cubicle opens up a little light turns blue on this wall. When that happens the next person in line can go in and take his seat. I.e., you can't choose who you sit next to.

Everything is written and communicated in Japanese and since you can't see the person serving you it's a little hard to communicate :)

You order your food through a machine like this.
You even pay the machine, and it gives you tickets which
you give to your server.

This is a close-up of the Ramen! It was fantastic!
The soup really made it special, but the noodles were
hand made, fresh, and al-dente. If they had Ramen
like this in the states I would eat it often! :)