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Slurping Through Tokyo Jan 30

Basil Childers for The New York Times Mutekiya is a trendy ramen shop in the Ikebukuro neighborhood.

Back in 1993, when I was a sophomore in college, I came across a movie that changed my life: “Tampopo,” the charming tale of a truck driver who comes to the aid of a young, beleaguered widow who’s struggling to raise a child—and run a ramen store. The movie, directed by the late Juzo Itami, is all about food—about the intricacies of making ramen and eating ramen, about slurping noodles, about the ways that what we eat and how we eat make us who we are.

“Tampopo” was also mere torture, for at that time in Baltimore, there was nowhere to get a dutiful, true bowl of ramen. For years afterward, I augmented the dried stuff I found at Chinese and Korean supermarkets with shredded scallions, fried eggs, sliced fish cake and roast pork, until, eventually, after I moved to New York City, I got to taste the real thing, first at Sapporo, then at Rai Rai Ken, and today at the numerous shops that period lower Manhattan.

All of which made this weekend’s Travel section cover story, “One Noodle at a Time” the fulfillment of a years-long dream. For six days at the end of November, I visited Tokyo and ate nothing but ramen: shoyu ramen, tonkotsu ramen, tantan men, tsukemen, each better than the last, each a bowl-shaped lesson in how Tokyo people eat and, therefore, who Tokyo people are. Along the way, friends would ask what one. bowl was my favorite, and my answer was always the same: The one I just ate.

Below is a map of the places I visited. Also, view a slide show of Tokyo’s brave new noodle world.


View Tokyo’s Ramen Shops in a larger map

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