Noodles in Japan

It's really hard to find bad udon or ramen in Japan. Every ramen or udon shop we walked by were lined with awesome photos and plastic food versions of super delicious-looking noodles. What more, even the 24hr udon and ramen places are AMAZING.

The udon places we visited this time round were all 'do-it-yourself' shops, meaning that you pick your own tempura topping you want after getting your basic udon order. There were udon with soup, udon with curry, but by far my favourite is the udon with yam and soft runny egg. The udon were simply super smooth and slipperiness which when your slurp, brings the flavour of the broth with it. mmm... yum!

Udon with broth and tempura

Udon with yam and soft runny egg

curry udon

Ramen-wise, we had ramen once at a store with chicken based soup, and once at a store with tonkatsu based soup. Most ramen stores typically require you to choose at the 'ticket machine' (which typically states options in japanese), meaning that a bit of guessing is typically required :)

The chicken based stock soup we had was really 'clean' tasting. It was tasty but didn't quite satisfy my tonkatsu craving. But what best was the egg... either the soft boiled one or the poached looking one, both types of egg were absolutely gorgeousness~

 soft runny egg, chicken soup based ramen

soft boiled egg chicken based ramen soup

At the tonkatsu based broth ramen, I had a miso whilst hubby had a shio flavoured soup. You dunk the noodles into the soup and simply just slurp it up. It was OMG awesomeness!!! The soup was crazy flavoursome with just the right thickness consistency. The tonkatsu soup made this a super filling meal and we were both super stuffed after. Just thinking about it is making me want more! :)

miso tonkatsu ramen

shio tonkatsu soup base

So the conclusion is, whilst we have pretty good and decent ramen in Sydney, ramen in Japan is simply just more awesome. Missing Japan like crazy!