explorations and ramen

So, yesterday was really the first day Laura and I got up and wandered around while Melissa was at school. We started off by getting some breakfast at the ever so glorious 7-11. I got three different kinds of onigiri and she got some nasty looking chicken sandwich on white bread. It seems that only white bread exists in this country. We sat on the side of the road and ate.

We walked and walked down Kanpachi dori. We found the awesomest Denny's that looked like a colonial mansion. And a scary pink bear. Eventually we found a really cool park and watched some kids play soccer.

We continued walking through the park, passed the Setagaya community art museum. Unfortunately it was closed so we weren't able to go check it out. But we did find a little family shrine on a street corner. When I die I want someone to make me a shrine and put it on the corner of my street. Here is a model.

We basically walked forever. More than three subway stops in fact. Laura got really angry because she was convinced we had walked in a straight line, but in fact we had walked three sides of a rectangle. I was convinced that if we made a right turn we would eventually get back to Yoga (the neighborhood the apartment is in) she hates it when I'm right :)

Now, the real purpose of this is to talk about dinner. We wandered around Yoga a little trying to figure out where to eat. We finally settled on a ramen place Melissa had been wanting to try. Now, I've eaten plenty of ramen in my life, some of it from some what I thought to be authentic places in LA. Nothing prepared me for the heavenly meal. This place was hole in the wall and dirty enough to get closed down in the state, I definitely got a good feeling about it. Upon walking in the door there was a little machine to the left where you put in your money and pushed a button to select your order. It was all in Japanese, so as usual Melissa read it to us and we kinda guessed at what we thought sounded good. We chose a spicy ramen with a miso base. MOST INCREDIBLE THING EVER. The bowl was the size of a medium size mixing bowl, and filled with meat, noodles, cabbage, chili powder, a soft boiled egg, and bean sprouts, all in a boiling miso broth. With a pat of butter on top. Absolutely blew my mind! It was so filling and rich, I wasn't even able to drink all the broth. If you know me, not finishing my food is a big deal.

Still a week left, and many more meals :)

As always, more pictures on my flickr