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Fall has arrived in Tokyo and with it an indefatigable sense of nostalgia, or natsukashisa. My time in this country might be coming to a close (maybe not... I'm working on it) and some blasts from the past have re-entered and re-exited my life like...

Menya Musashi's namesake is one Miyamoto Musashi, regarded as one of Japan's greatest swordsmen and creator of the two-handed swordfighting technique niten-ryu, which translates to "Tarantino Wet Dream." According to legend he never lost a duel in over 50 years as a wandering warrior --...

My trip to Kyoto was awesome for many reasons. Temples, new friends, raw nature, or scenes like this one, just three boys feeding hawks like a flock of seagulls. Despite its rural look this is in the heart of Kyoto....

It's no secret that I have a massive man-crush on Ramenate, a ramen blog written by a guy named Nate. For the longest time I didn't know his name and thought the blog was pronounced ramen nah-tay, like French. He's one of the rare...

On Sunday, April 6, my picture and story was in the Kanagawa edition of the Yumiuri Shimbun, one of Japan's three biggest newspapers (yes only the local Kanagawa edition... but still). Read it here if you can read Japanese. If not you can look...

Oh Ichiran. I was very anti-you for a long time because of your bizarre seating arrangement. It just seems so weird that we, the customers, have to sit at a private booth, in silence, without speaking to the chefs -- instead ordering by...

Nagi, Nagi, Nagi. This one's been near the top of my ever-expanding ramen bucket list for a long time. I've been to a Nagi branch before -- it was the first Tokyo bowl I had with fellow ramen blogger Brian from

The Ramen Shaman

The Ramen Shaman: Koshin (Nishi-Shinjuku)

Will VanderWyden on Feb 12, 2014

My new neighborhood in Tokyo is called Yayoicho, just a mile west of Shinjuku, one of the biggest entertainment and nightlife spots on planet earth. It's like Times Square, only if New Yorkers hung out there all the time instead of clueless tourists and touts....

I'm on my longest trip to Tokyo yet. I moved here! They granted me a one year visa, and I've been here for twelve days now. I still can't believe it. My dream for many years has finally come true. I left...

Last week a reader asked if I had tried Chibiscus. Apparently it had been compared to Tsujita -- a bold statement. I promised I'd check it out. I assumed it was the random shop that opened on Sunset Blvd earlier this year around the same...

I may have missed the recent LA Ramen Yokocho Fest due to an unavoidable trip to Ohio, but I lucked out into finding out about Mitsuwa Market's Hokkaido Festival in Torrance. It was this past weekend and the next best thing to actually being in...

This was one for the ages. Jiro is legendary. It’s spawned a slew of imitators, one of which crossed an ocean. Many think it’s an entity unto itself, like tsukemen, rather than a type of ramen. I’ve known about Jiro since the very beginning...

I went to the future the other day and found this synopsis on an IMDB page from 2018: A lonely Tokyo ramen shop proprietor secretly pines for a local bar owner and former model. His three most devoted customers, two wacky foreigners and their Japanese...

Two years ago, bored at work with nothing better to do but read through American ex-pat ramen journals, I decided to start my own ramen blog. I didn't tell anyone about it for a year because I was only using it to learn more...

I’ve written plenty about Tsujita. It is easily the best ramen shop in LA (both their hakata-style tonkotsu and tsukemen dipping ramen) and is, in my opinion, the best shop in America. But since opening in the fall of 2011 there has been...

Los Angeles to San Francisco. San Francisco to Tokyo. Tokyo to Sapporo. Plane to train to subway to foot. 33 straight hours of travel and my first meal in Japan made it all worthwhile. Welcome to すみれ (Sumire). My couch-surfing hosts...

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a man embarked on a quest was to eat at every ramen shop in Los Angeles. Mr. Ramen was on the list from Day One, but the man never visited. You see, Mr. Ramen has...

Men Oh hails from Tokushima prefecture on Shikoku Island, the smallest and least populated of Japans’s four main islands. Until the completion of the first of several bridge systems in 1988 the island was only accessible by ferry or plane, and...

On a dull, drizzling day in Tokyo I set out for my second-ever bowl of tsukemen (ramen dipping noodles). After its introduction in the early 2000's, tsukemen has boomed in popularity, rising to a crescendo a few years ago and still going strong. Many, many shops...

I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. Not exactly a ramen mecca, but times change. Ramen's profile is ever-growing and in 2011 "celebrity chef Jonathan Sawyer" (that's according to his bio, I guess he's on tv or something) opened NoodleCat, Cleveland's...