Tokyo pt 2 - Ramen meal #1

Friday our calendar was free during the day so after catching up on email, Pat and I headed out for a late lunch.  We had a whole city to choose from, but in reality there was no choice - we had to go for Ramen... not just any ramen, some delicious Hakata ramen at a Tokyo branch of my favorite 'Private Booth' Ramen restaurant, Ichiran ( seen most recently in this blog from two weeks ago).　

パット君と僕は金曜日の昼時、あまり予定ないから、一寸relaxedで出掛けた。晩昼ご飯為に上野駅の一蘭ラーメン屋へ行った。一蘭知っていますか？ないたら、 二週前の九州ブログを見てください。

This time we went to the Ueno ( 上野) Station branch... i brought a store brochure with me from Kyushu so I could find them...

Ueno's famous Ameyayokocho (アメヤ横丁)...  as I said to Patrick - the only part of Tokyo that resembles a street market you'd find in HK or China.

Actually we went too far, it turns out the Ueno Ichiran is in the mall connected to the station:

Ticket machine was pretty much the same... but the restaurant was a bit different in other ways,  most of all they had not just the private booths,  but also a few small two person tables (cause sometimes its not JUST about the ramen).

Even though there were two of us, we went for the booth though:

Similar to the standard Ichran booth, except in this case they changed around a few things like the water tap design...

For the sake of experimentation,  I recorded the ramen options we selected before we gave the menus in to the server guy... (mine is on the right).　　

右方が僕のメニュ、左方がパット君の。僕は辛い好きじゃない。

oh, one thing i forgot to mention about the superior design of this place... 

nothing goes to waste!  if you want to order additional items once you've bought your tickets and submitted your menu...

In the middle of the meal you decide you want more, you just circle what you want on the chopstick wrapper to get your extra noodles, egg, drinks, etc.   Push the call button and the guy takes it and tells you how much to pay, which you leave in a little tray they put out for you.

Meal #2:

Anyway, in a jiffy the ramen was delivered and they close your curtain so you can enjoy the ramen in privacy.　速く美味しいそうラーメンをくれて,カーテンを閉まった。（一人で楽しんだ!)

Patrick actually got a 2nd helping of pork and noodles...  he will be a very chubby boy when we return to HK on monday...   More from Friday's exciting adventures coming soon!

パット君は替え玉した！おなか大きいなるかも知りません。。。