Fourth and final post in a series
Further afield: places just a short train ride outside of Tokyo
Kawagoe
Inspired by this NYT article, I ventured to Kawagoe for a day, a town nicknamed "Little Edo" for Tokyo's ancient name. Many of the town's old kura (warehouses) survived WW2 bombing, and thus, you can get a glimpse of what the Tokyo of yore looked like.
Today, the kura are used for retail space, and you can get a variety of candies, crackers, pickles and kimonos by peeking under the half-curtains. Kawagoe's most prominent agricultural crop is sweet potatoes and yams, so you can find all manner of candies, crackers and sake made from the sweet potato. I promptly snapped up a few bags of candied sweet potatoes, seaweed crackers and fruit-shaped cookies.
One street over from the old kura district is Kashiya Yokocho, or Penny Candy Lane. This is a narrow alley packed with vendors selling (slightly cheaper) crackers, candies, gift items and fu, a bread-like wheat and sugar concoction.
Yokohama: Chinatown, Ramen Museum
Yokohama is a port city and contains Japan's largest Chinatown. I stopped by to check it out, and while it is smaller by far than the Chinese enclaves of New York or San Francisco, it does have a charm of its own. This Chinatown is characterized by the popularity of mooncakes and steamed buns (bao), with many shops devoted to selling solely these items. Of course, this being Japan, we had to find some way to make the bao cuter. Enter the Panda bao.
If you take the subway from Yokohama to Shin-Yokohama, you can visit the Ramen Museum. Upstairs, there are displays on the invention and history of ramen (unfortunately all in Japanese). Apparently, there are 12 types of ramen noodles and numerous soup bases. What you are really here for though is the ramen restaurant mall, where you can try 9 styles of ramen from different regions of Japan. Ramen was ordered via vending machines (of course), and you could get full size portions for ¥700-900 and mini (ミニ) half-size portions for ¥500-600. Both of the ramens that I tried were delicious, and I especially recommend the miso-based broths, which are boldly flavorful and can stand up to more intense toppings.
Ramen bowl #1: category / tonkotsu, basic seasoning / salt, ingredients / pork, kikurage (wood ear), bean sprouts, menma (fermented bamboo shoots) and green onion
Ramen bowl #2: category / miso, basic seasoning / soybean paste, ingredients, pork, fish cake slice, menma, green onions, pepper paste
Comments