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Ramen

Kendo and Ramen

Today I went down to Lit­tle Tokyo to grab some ramen for lunch, and hap­pened upon the Cherry Blos­som Fes­ti­val. I only stayed a lit­tle while, to see some sumo and kendo per­for­mances.

I got there late for the sumo un­for­tu­nately, but I did get to see a few matches where Dan Kalbfleisch wiped the floor with some other guys.

The kendo demon­stra­tion started with sen­sei Cary Yoshio Mi­zobe per­form­ing tameshi­giri—cut­ting a tatami omote with a katana. His stu­dents went on from there to show off their moves with shi­nai. Sen­sei Mi­zobe was ex­plain­ing one of the moves: tsuki, a stab to the throat ap­par­ently dif­fi­cult enough that he only lets his black belt stu­dents per­form it, to lessen the risk of not hav­ing enough pre­ci­sion and in­jur­ing the op­po­nents. He said he was hired to train Brit­tany Mur­phy to per­form it for her new movie, The Ramen Girl. The only prob­lem is, they wanted him to train her on this ad­vanced move in eight hours. His only ad­vice was to to­tally fake it out with cam­era tricks, or risk in­jury. Thought that was funny :)

Odd new ramen place in Little Tokyo

Just tried this new ramen place in­side Weller Court called Chin-Ma-Ya of Tokyo, right below the in­fa­mous Oro­chon Ramen. Their spe­cialty is tan tan men, a fu­sion of ramen with Chi­nese dan dan mian. They serve it with three lev­els of spice, and I or­dered the spici­est “orig­i­nal”. The broth was good – very thick and murky, lots of good fla­vor, and ad­e­quately spicy. It lost a bit in the top­pings, com­ing with ground beef, ground pork, and only a few stray bits of spinach. I got a side of gyoza, which while not the worst I’ve had where def­i­nitely far from the best.

But where it re­ally failed was the noo­dles. The first bite im­me­di­ately made me think of some­thing I never thought would come to mind in a ramen place: my mom bak­ing cook­ies. Cu­ri­ously tak­ing an­other bite, I tasted it again. The fla­vor was al­most like unsweet­ened cookie dough. I’m usu­ally down for try­ing new things, some fla­vors need to just grow on you. But after eat­ing half the bowl I couldn’t take any more – the heav­i­ness of the noo­dles com­bined with such a strange fla­vor was too much for me.

Looks like Daikokuya gets to keep their crown, with San Sui Tei com­ing in sec­ond if the Daikokuya line is un­bear­ably long. Last time I went to San Sui Tei, they cooked up some fresh choco­late-filled mochi balls for me. Not sure if they will be the norm or if they where test­ing them on me as a re­cur­ring cus­tomer, but they where good!