Independent day...

Day 178:

Are you ready? Today was my day off and Michael and Jeremy were back for their personal ramen tour hosted by myself, Nate, and rameniac. First up was Tetsu in Koenji for their amazing tsukemen.

Atsumori in da house! Tetsu is the only place I know of that serves their atsumori (warm) tsukemen noodles in a hot broth.

If you're in the mood for tsukemen, you can never go wrong with Tetsu. It's rock solid!

Speaking of rocks, you can request one of these hot iron rocks to warm up your soup after you've finished off the noodles. Be careful though cuz it's damn hot!

Next up was an old school shoyu ramen at Harukiya in Ogikubo.

Normally you aren't allowed to take photographs, but after a twenty-minute talk with the boss' wife and some slight convincing of what we were trying to accomplish, the door was opened.

If you look closely you can probably see my soul in this soup.

Cuz it's in there...somewhere.

After a quick visit to Ganko in Takadanobaba for some photos...

We then found ourselves at Nidaime Keisuke awaiting some french-influenced shrimp ramen.

Ebi soba in da house! Woah, that shrimp is in yo face!

But don't let the contemporary bowl fool you, it's actually quite impractical to eat out of.

This ramen tasted great, but I don't see myself ever craving it again.

Last on our list was the heavily fish-based ramen of Watanabe.

Being that this was our fourth bowl in less than 6 hours, I can't say that I'd crave this ramen again either. It's a bit too fishy for me.

The 2x4 menma stick was a bit too tough, but a rare sight to see nonetheless.

It's been awhile since I've eaten ramen at a pace like this, but it was worth every bite. Later that night I had to hunt down the kebab truck in Shinjuku to fulfill a week-long craving.

Damn, now that was a fun ramen-filled day. I can't wait to do it again...