Monday, September 13, 2010

Dinner at the Ramen Ya

Monday's are the only day all my kids are home for dinner and with Matt being gone we decided to try a local ramen-ya (ramen shop) in our area.

Before coming to Japan I always thought ramen was the cup-o-noodles or dried blocks that we lived on during college because we were too poor to buy anything else. But actually traditional ramen is a Japanese noodle dish with Chinese-style wheat noodles served in a broth (meat or fish based) with different toppings, such as sliced pork, nori (dried seaweed), green onions, eggs, goma (sesame seeds) and sometimes even tofu. Every shop and area has its own variation of ramen.


The shops typically have different spices and sometimes fresh ginger and garlic to add for some extra flavor.

The kids have gotten very good at eating with chopsticks over the past 21 months.

Proper etiquette is to drink out of the bowl and to slurp up the  noodles off the chopsticks. I, however, just can't bring myself to do either. So instead, I  drank my broth with this cool spoon and delicately ate my noodles off the chopsticks.

Most ramen shops also have one of our family's favorite little treats -- gyozas!

For once, I was actually able to read our bill! I guess 20 months of lessons are finally paying off.

The kids rated the overall dinner an A, and while it was very tasty, I think they were just excited they were all given little treats when we left.

 

2 comments:

red527 said...

Looks yummy and I never did like those ramen noodles in the dried packages (except for that yummy coleslaw salad)!

I am impressed that everyone is so good with the chopsticks!

Colleen Grob said...

Isn't the ramen amazing there!! We had a little ramen house outside the gate of base housing in Ikego. It was soooo good. I miss that alot. I miss the gyoza's too! They are delish!