Full Moon Ramen
So all I accomplished today in the end was:
Making 4 Christmas cards that I owe kids at school (long story, not in public entry)
Doing laundry
Watching the Koshien Bowl football game
Not playing TOO much Puzzle Pirates
Getting ramen from Mangetsu
Scouring Akabane Book-Off
Watching the movie "ブタがいた教室", aka School Days With A Pig
I mentioned the Koshien Bowl a bit before. Kansai ended up beating Hosei 50-38. I was not surprised. While Hosei got in a few good drives, Kansai just had a better offense, period, though I became rather fond of Hosei's long-haired freak running back Hara-kun. Interestingly, the marching band plays the same stuff for football as they do for baseball.
I guess the weirdest part of the day, though, was actually Mangetsu. It's a ramen shop that![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
isamum recommended a few weeks ago. Anyway, it's a little family-run ramen place that's on the back street from LaLa Garden, so you don't usually pass by it unless you're meaning to go on that road, or taking the shortcut back from Daiei. So I walked up to it, tentatively... and looked in and an old guy was staring at me from the door, in a "WTF is the white person doing here sort of way," and he said, "Ramen desu." ("We have ramen.") I said something like "はい、そうです。友達から、この店は赤羽の一番美味しいラーメンだ。。。と言われた。" ("I know... my friend said this was the tastiest ramen in Akabane.") I don't really remember, it was a bit odd because the guy and his wife (I assume) were looking at me really really weird so I was kind of nervous. But I sat down and looked through their menu and ordered the white miso ramen, just because miso ramen is my favorite. (Looking back I see that is one of the ones Sam recommended, but I didn't remember that at the time.)
So, the upshot is that the ramen itself was very good, it is infact homemade noodles which are really yummy, and their miso soup, I'm not quite sure what was in it. It was just spicy enough to make my nose run a little, but not too spicy. They had sprouts and some other veggies that I couldn't entirely identify in it, but they were good. And the bowl was HUGE! But it cost 880 yen, which is a lot for a bowl of ramen, but this was pretty good stuff.
When I was on my way out I was the only customer left there somehow, so they asked me what I thought, if it really was the best ramen in Akabane, and I said it was definitely the most interesting I'd had... I asked about the menu and they told me about some of the various stuff they have, like the tofu ramen and the carbo ramen and so on. And after that they kind of grilled me, like "Who recommended this place to you?" and I'm like "uh... a friend who lives nearby in west Akabane, I was complaining there aren't any good ramen shops out there", and they're like "no, I mean, a Japanese person, not a foreign person, right?" "Yeah, a Japanese person." I guess maybe they don't get a lot of white people in there. The wife seemed particularly interested in finding out about me, so she was like "you a student? working at a company? what?" and I said I was an English teacher. "Where? Near here?" "No, in Arakawa." At this, the old man perked up and started asking me about Arakawa, seems he grew up near Tabata or something to that effect, so it turned into a lot of "Oh, do you know Arakawa Yuen? Do you like it? Do you take the Toden?" and so on, which was a little weird. I always wonder why people are so interested in finding out exactly where I work, which always makes me feel a little paranoid. I think they got the impression I work at Ogu Elementary school though. But, I paid and left, and then the wife yelled after me to wait a minute, and she gave me a little piece of paper that was a 30-yen-off ticket, and it had the store's phone number and info and all on it, so she was like "no, really, please come back sometime."
I guess I'll try to come back maybe next week when it gets even colder. I'm totally a winter ramen person -- don't really like it in anything but cold weather, still can't figure out why the hell people eat it in Fukuoka in the summer :)
Anyway, that aside...
"School Days With A Pig" was as fantastic as expected. Maybe it hit home to me a little more than usual because my own impending end at my school, and also because the 6th-graders in the movie are not so far removed from my 7th-graders (I could even look at some of the kids in the movie and be like "Oh my god. I KNOW that kid, that's Iijima-kun," or something). The movie is based on a true story, where one day a 6th-grade homeroom teacher brings a piglet to school at the start of the year and tells the class, "We're going to raise this pig for the year and then eat it at graduation time. Sound good?" and the kids are all like "OMG CUTE!! CAN WE PET IT??" and so on, and they build a house for the pig, and they name it P-Chan (all the teachers are like "you let them NAME it?!?!") and they take turns doing all the things to take care of the pig, feeding it, cleaning up after it, giving it baths, saying goodbye to it every day before going home... in return, the pig becomes part of their class, it's very cute, he always seems to break out of his pighouse and sneak into the school at the most opportune moments. Naturally about halfway through the year, one day while eating school lunch, a girl suddenly is like "I can't eat this... this is meat just like P-chan", and another kid says "no, it's just meat, it's not him, it's different" and another kid is like "dude, isn't that discrimination? how can it be okay to eat one pig but not another?" and another kid says "But P-chan is a classmate, we can't eat a classmate," and thus the debate starts: do we eat him or not, once the year ends?
Seriously, good movie.
Sigh. Two weeks left...
Making 4 Christmas cards that I owe kids at school (long story, not in public entry)
Doing laundry
Watching the Koshien Bowl football game
Not playing TOO much Puzzle Pirates
Getting ramen from Mangetsu
Scouring Akabane Book-Off
Watching the movie "ブタがいた教室", aka School Days With A Pig
I mentioned the Koshien Bowl a bit before. Kansai ended up beating Hosei 50-38. I was not surprised. While Hosei got in a few good drives, Kansai just had a better offense, period, though I became rather fond of Hosei's long-haired freak running back Hara-kun. Interestingly, the marching band plays the same stuff for football as they do for baseball.
I guess the weirdest part of the day, though, was actually Mangetsu. It's a ramen shop that
isamum recommended a few weeks ago. Anyway, it's a little family-run ramen place that's on the back street from LaLa Garden, so you don't usually pass by it unless you're meaning to go on that road, or taking the shortcut back from Daiei. So I walked up to it, tentatively... and looked in and an old guy was staring at me from the door, in a "WTF is the white person doing here sort of way," and he said, "Ramen desu." ("We have ramen.") I said something like "はい、そうです。友達から、この店は赤羽の一番美味しいラーメンだ。。。と言われた。" ("I know... my friend said this was the tastiest ramen in Akabane.") I don't really remember, it was a bit odd because the guy and his wife (I assume) were looking at me really really weird so I was kind of nervous. But I sat down and looked through their menu and ordered the white miso ramen, just because miso ramen is my favorite. (Looking back I see that is one of the ones Sam recommended, but I didn't remember that at the time.)So, the upshot is that the ramen itself was very good, it is infact homemade noodles which are really yummy, and their miso soup, I'm not quite sure what was in it. It was just spicy enough to make my nose run a little, but not too spicy. They had sprouts and some other veggies that I couldn't entirely identify in it, but they were good. And the bowl was HUGE! But it cost 880 yen, which is a lot for a bowl of ramen, but this was pretty good stuff.
When I was on my way out I was the only customer left there somehow, so they asked me what I thought, if it really was the best ramen in Akabane, and I said it was definitely the most interesting I'd had... I asked about the menu and they told me about some of the various stuff they have, like the tofu ramen and the carbo ramen and so on. And after that they kind of grilled me, like "Who recommended this place to you?" and I'm like "uh... a friend who lives nearby in west Akabane, I was complaining there aren't any good ramen shops out there", and they're like "no, I mean, a Japanese person, not a foreign person, right?" "Yeah, a Japanese person." I guess maybe they don't get a lot of white people in there. The wife seemed particularly interested in finding out about me, so she was like "you a student? working at a company? what?" and I said I was an English teacher. "Where? Near here?" "No, in Arakawa." At this, the old man perked up and started asking me about Arakawa, seems he grew up near Tabata or something to that effect, so it turned into a lot of "Oh, do you know Arakawa Yuen? Do you like it? Do you take the Toden?" and so on, which was a little weird. I always wonder why people are so interested in finding out exactly where I work, which always makes me feel a little paranoid. I think they got the impression I work at Ogu Elementary school though. But, I paid and left, and then the wife yelled after me to wait a minute, and she gave me a little piece of paper that was a 30-yen-off ticket, and it had the store's phone number and info and all on it, so she was like "no, really, please come back sometime."
I guess I'll try to come back maybe next week when it gets even colder. I'm totally a winter ramen person -- don't really like it in anything but cold weather, still can't figure out why the hell people eat it in Fukuoka in the summer :)
Anyway, that aside...
"School Days With A Pig" was as fantastic as expected. Maybe it hit home to me a little more than usual because my own impending end at my school, and also because the 6th-graders in the movie are not so far removed from my 7th-graders (I could even look at some of the kids in the movie and be like "Oh my god. I KNOW that kid, that's Iijima-kun," or something). The movie is based on a true story, where one day a 6th-grade homeroom teacher brings a piglet to school at the start of the year and tells the class, "We're going to raise this pig for the year and then eat it at graduation time. Sound good?" and the kids are all like "OMG CUTE!! CAN WE PET IT??" and so on, and they build a house for the pig, and they name it P-Chan (all the teachers are like "you let them NAME it?!?!") and they take turns doing all the things to take care of the pig, feeding it, cleaning up after it, giving it baths, saying goodbye to it every day before going home... in return, the pig becomes part of their class, it's very cute, he always seems to break out of his pighouse and sneak into the school at the most opportune moments. Naturally about halfway through the year, one day while eating school lunch, a girl suddenly is like "I can't eat this... this is meat just like P-chan", and another kid says "no, it's just meat, it's not him, it's different" and another kid is like "dude, isn't that discrimination? how can it be okay to eat one pig but not another?" and another kid says "But P-chan is a classmate, we can't eat a classmate," and thus the debate starts: do we eat him or not, once the year ends?
Seriously, good movie.
Sigh. Two weeks left...
no subject
I don't know your daughter well enough to say whether I saw her. They don't focus a LOT on the kids not in either class 6-2 or later 3-1, but there are certainly tons of kids around at all times. That's pretty crazy, though, I had no idea it was filmed here (didn't watch the credits, either).
I'm not familiar with Tokyo Kasei University, but okay, I'll take your word for it. And yeah, everyone else who was in there before me was middle-aged or older... but that seems normal for neighborhood ramen shops? Ohtori's place, out where I used to live, the only other people I ever saw in there were middle-aged men or older, occasionally older women with the middle-aged men, and then VERY occasionally, young punkish-looking guys who'd come in off scooters. And that was it. So, yeah, a group of younger women would be out of place, I suppose.