I told my friend, I would write something about my living in Tokyo. I have spent much of my time here because of my fantastic company. Anyway, not talk about my work, since this time, I have been staying here for 3 weeks, I have a chance to really explore around according to my U-Magazine guidebook.

In there they recommended 5 ramen shops to readers. Well, as I don't have chance to explore more, let me tell you how I judge a good ramen...

1, soup - soup has to be drinkable, not just salt water, better to be think pig bone soup, canont be too hot, cannot be cool, just right temperature.

2, noodle - not oilly, thin and chewy, not too hard, not too yellow

3, content:
   a, Chashu (BBQ pork) cannot be too fat, cannot be thin meat also;
   b, Tamago (Egg) is semi-cooked cannot be too big and cannot be too white;
   c, others elements to affect the ramen

Well, to be in short, here are my ranking for that 5 ramen shops:

1, 博多一風堂
I tried 2 times, both times I liked the ramen a lot. The shop is in ebisu, the meat not so fat and the soup, I could drink all the soup at the end. They asked you how hard the noodle you want. On the menu, just point to them the bold word at the right bottom category of the menu is ok. Not too hot, and there is little bit service. In general, that's the ramen you want.

2, 九州じやんがら拉麵
I also tried 2 times, one near harajuku and another one near ginza. The shop in Ginza is tiny, and it is the shop with the most choices. Well, too much you may not know what to choose. One good thing is about their chilli paste, not too hot and even sitting is not comfortable, it's pretty nice place to go.

3, 阿夫利
This shop is relative comfortable in ebisu as well. I live quite near ebisu, so I can go ebisu for ramen easily. After buying the winter special ramen from the machine. I sat and ate. It was not bad in general, and I remember I spent my eating time to watch harry potter.

4, 一蘭池袋東口店
Well, since I heard this one was the best ramen, so I went. Luckily there was no queue. I bought the ticket from machine, just simple ramen. OK, normally I would choose 'everything' if there is or just ramen from the machine. It's really a good place for one person to eat, as eating in a voting box... for the vote, I chose everything in the middle to be fair. So I think if you want harder noodle etc. you can select. The problem I had with the ramen was the chilli powder... The powder, not paste, was a bit sharp so I could drink the soup. If you are not prepare to eat chilli, you can select the lower degree of chilli...

5, 麵屋武藏
I queued for 50mins for this famous ramen shop. Well, maybe famous of the queue. As the queue was so long, I had much expectation with it. I chose the egg + chashu noodle. They would ask you if you want more or less oil, I think my friend, you won't choose more oil, right? The problem is mainly with the noodle and the soup. Hmm... ramen is soup noodle, so both are failed, is it pretty hard to ask me to queue for 50mins again. The noodle is like oil noodle, and the soup... I think if you want to try this noodle, you can go to 麵藏 in HK to order one and you would know the taste.