Day 5: Udon is variety

Today I can quite comfortably say that it started like any other. And it pretty much was; Waking up hating the fact I am awake, standard day teaching, then lunch. Im not going to lie, a little part of me looks forward to Fridays every week. Eating out isn't expensive in Japan, I mean as I have said you have ¥100($1/£0.63) Sushi, Ramen for ¥600($6/£3.80) and Udon, well udon is only ¥500($5/£3.15).

However, it adds up, so as you saw yesterday I get the teachers obento. Only ¥300/$3/£1.90 a day.

Look at the Pretty colours

This is very typical of Japanese lunch. They love variety and presentation, so much so that a Japanese person I know, who had been in to the Uk in the 80's, said "I hear your food is getting better, when I was there they didn't care about presentation or colour." That was fun to hear!

But Fridays, they are my treat day, I eat out for lunch, sometimes it's ramen. I don't know why but I just wasn't in the mood today, strange. I would say about 50% of the time I go for udon. This is udon:

You take out the noodles, dip them in the bowl to the left them slurp them up. Nothing funny about that.

Udon sounds almost the same as ramen, its noodles in a broth with toppings. But when you get to know it, it is massively different, the noodles are thick and have a very distinctive flavour, the soup is usually made of fish stock and soy sauce not meat, so it is much healthier and lighter. Also they sell tempura, which I had no idea was Japanese. Thank you very much Chinese restaurants in the UK. Turns out Chinese restaurants just sell any asian food, so I then later find out that everything they sell isn't Chinese! Next thing you tell me will be the chips from the Chinese aren't traditionally Chinese either!

See, different! Thick!

Next thing you tell me will be that fortune cookies aren't Chinese!

Anyway, udon is a delicious and fantastic distraction from another soup based noodle!

Following lunch there was again a normal school day then the gym. Ah, the school gym, free, a little dirty and with the constant fear that students will come in and watch me work out. But its free, so I'm not going to complain. Bigger than my fear of student watching, is of the rather built gym teacher watching. This is because I am always doing something wrong, always! There I am with a certain weight feeling accomplished, he comes in, and I have to drop down several weights and feel like a fool because I'm doing it the easy way.

Yes! I was doing it wrong and Yes! it is better this way, but on paper it looks worse! (I like writing down all m numbers, I'm so cool)

Anyway after that I went straight for ramen, it is such good post work out food! Today was Miso-ramen, it is a kind of thicker and earthier soup. (Not sure you can tell, but I don't know how to describe food) But its a delicious ramen, but it, in my opinion lacks a certain meaty flavour. Miso is made from soy beans. If you can't tell, Japan love soy. Everything is soy.

Whats that sauce? It's there at the beginning of the meal but gone at the end!

I had gyouza again, and when I eat them I dip them in that sauce you see at the top. But I'm not going to tell you what it is, oh no. I will leave you with a Lost-esque cliff hanger; what is it made of? Why is it red? Find out in the next blog entry!

Day 4: Who's ever found chocolate in their laptop?

My day began just like any other. Wait, no it didn't, I got to work, opened my laptop and this horrendous noise came from it, a sort of grinding, crunching noise (Try making the old dial up tone with the back of your throat). I think the best way to sum it up the situation would be with a quote from the teacher who sits next to me.

"Thats not a good noise is it?"

It wasn't. I then did what all technically minded individuals do when faced with a big problem. That's right, I turned it off and on again. It didn't bloody work! I was stumped, all my problem solving options had already failed.

Then I relaxed, checked out some of my computer info and found out my fan has stopped working. Fun! I then had to teach 2 classes and after that I spend the next 2 hours buying compressed air, getting my stuff together then taking the back off my laptop and giving it the more technical version of pulling out the game cartridge and blowing on it. (That's something that as I get older less and less people are going to be able to know what I'm talking about, do 3DS owners still do it?)

Upon opening my laptop I realised DAMN I'm messy! There was so much dust in there, lots of pieces of tatami (The traditional rice straw flooring that covers my apartment) and a bit of chocolate.
Yes thats right, I am ashamed to say that,  albeit small, there was a piece of chocolate inside my laptop. Not really looking healthy am I? "Hi, I'm Steve, I eat ramen everyday and stuff chocolate into my electronics."

Tatami- Beautiful, Traditional and also you will find tiny bits of it everywhere. Probably for the rest of your life

After all that I found a tiny little stone, and a hell of a lot of fluff in my fan. Culprit found and dealt with. As soon as I finished I felt a great deal of accomplishment. Then I realised that I clearly haven't been blogging long or I would have thought to take photos. Just try to imagine a half a snickers in a laptop.

Tonight for dinner I had the kotteri ramen (こってりラメーン). Its a thicker broth that is a fair bit richer than the rest, I rather like it. It lacks the extra meat but still good. I also had ミンチカツ or minchi katsu. Minchi is how the Japanese pronounce mince, and katsu basically means breaded and deep fried. Nothing to not like there!

For all of you who felt cheated with no before and after picture yesterday

I said before that my food variety Mondays - Thursdays, was... lets just say lacking. Well today I felt it, in fact here is a very visual representation of nearly everything I have eaten in the past 3 days:

Spot the difference... Well done, the condiments in the background have moved

It's really not that bad at the moment because its still interesting but I feel that maybe next thursday or the following one it may feel a little too repetitive. However, tomorrow is Friday which means Udon for lunch and this weekend maybe I will introduce you to ¥100/$1/£0.60 sushi. Here's hoping tomorrow has less gluttony based self discovery.

Day 3: Busy Day...

The typhoon came and went, and as you can tell, I am still here. That means more ramen for me and more reading about it for you. As I said yesterday, the students didn't have to come to school, in the morning at least, because of the typhoon. Which is a little crazy because this is what it looked like:

Granted it was rather windy, but you can't tell that for these picures

Which all turned out quite nicely as the only classes I had to teach were in the morning. Can't complain. 

As I said in the prologue, I go to the gym 2-3 times a week, usually Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On top of that, Wednesdays are the night that I get Mr Miyage to teach me how to wax on, wax off. (In reality its much more me, in a slightly oversized karate outfit, flailing at thin air). This combination of gym after school finishing at 6 and karate at 7 left me a full hour to get from school, to the ramen shop, eat dinner and then to karate. Plenty of time, right??? 

So today I had the Egg ramen (味玉ラメーン), 味玉 Basically translates as tasty ball. Yup, today for dinner I had tasty ball noodle soup! Delicious. I'm afraid, no before and after pic today, however I did crack open the tasty ball so you could see the insides.

It is basically just a soft boiled egg, you just have a dirty mind

Literally (In the actual literal sense, not the one people always use when they just mean figuratively), I had only 10 mins to eat this, and only 10 to let it settle before my karate class.

I do not advise this. 

Turns out it's not just swimming you have to wait after you eat with. Karate is a rather active sport, where you jump about and kick and things. This does not pair well with a full stomach of ramen. The first hour of Karate I felt massively nauseous, the class only runs for an hour and a half.

So life lesson learnt, don't only leave 20 mins before a karate class to eat a whole bowl of delicious noodley, eggy, meaty soup. Some times things that should be common sense actually turn out to be life lessons, who knew. So, next week, ramen after Karate!

Oh and I nearly forgot, so that bowl up there cost me the sum total of ¥100, yup thats right $1, £0.63, €0.75. What ever currency you use, its bloody cheap. OR you could just see it as an expensive tasty ball! 

Either way, I'm not bored of it yet, which is a good thing because I am less than a 10th of the way through, lets just hope it stays as easy and enjoyable as this. 

Day 2: Ramen-Loading for the Typhoon.

Typhoon! It's typhoon season and that means typhoons come and today one came. I am informed by Wikipedia that a typhoon, hurricane and cyclone is all the same thing, but it is nothing to worry about as tomorrow the students don't have to come to school, it's too dangerous, but the teachers do......I'll just let you think about that one.

So my plan was three fold; Eat ramen, go to my English class, Hold up in my home till school. This was essentially the exact same as most tuesday nights for me, but this time with a typhoon outside.

Every Tuesday I teach an evening class English, so my usual habit was to eat out before it because I finish school on Tuesdays at 17:00 and my evening class is at 19:30. So one benefit this month of ramen has brought me is I now don't have to decide where to eat, in fact for the next 4 weeks I don't.

Shall I go here?.... or here??? Oh, decisions decisions. I'll go here!

I also came to a realisation, I order the teachers lunches at school everyday Monday-Thursday. Fridays I treat myself to udon, another soup and noodle based dish but this time thick noodles and a healthy broth. (Japan really likes noodles, and as you can tell, so do I!) Anyway, I digress, so this means Monday-Thursday my lunch is mostly the same, teachers obento (お弁当) the Japanese word for lunch box, and for dinner I have ramen at the ramen shop.

I'm not complaining, but they do get repetitive. Gotta love the colours though!!!

This means added to my usual coffee for breakfast my daily food variety, Monday-Thurday, consists of; when I drink my coffee, what fried thing will be in lunch and which of the 8 "varieties" of ramen I will be eating that day. I may have rushed into this whole month of ramen thing.

A pictorial representation of my daily food variety, gotta love the colours though!

Speaking of ramen, I had my second bowl today, I chose the extra meat today. In all honesty it's my favourite (Extra meat!!!). I got it most of the times I went on my way to the 80 bowls I needed for this adventure to begin. Thats right, adventure, for some people its pushing their mind and body to climb Mount Everest, or to the bottom of the ocean. Mine is 31 bowls of noodles in soup! Anyway, I was told that people may like to see before and after pictures, in case you thought I was just ordering and not eating the ramen. For all you neigh-sayers out there, read it and weep:

Which is before? Which is after? I'm not going to tell you. 

So, to those keen of eye, you will notice that the plate to the right is not gyouza, it is in fact buta-kimchi. Buta (豚) means pork and kimchi is a Korean spicy fermented cabbage (It tastes infinitely better than it sounds). They fry the pork with the kimchi and it becomes unbelievably flavoursome and tender. This is my second favourite side dish here!

So thats day 2, off to bed and if you don't hear from me tomorrow I was blown away by the typhoon and that means the next time you hear from me my blog posts will be significantly more interesting than just telling you about what food I am currently eating. If you miss me, you can just check out this guy, its basically the same, but more brief.

Day 1: It Begins!

So, here we are already, the beginning. Day 1 of 31. And unfortunately for you guys it was nothing thrilling. I have been to this restaurant before many times, 80 times in fact, as you know. So today was just like every other time I have ever been pretty much. But, seeing as you will be new to this, I will give you a quick lowdown.

So i found out that I get 並ラメーン(nami-ramen) or the basic, no frills ramen free. Thats the ramen you see as the top left bowl in the picture below. If I choose any of the other options I get the price of the nami-ramen off. So this free ramen offer will get me either one bowl of ramen free per day, or I can get ¥650 ($6.60/£4) off my order.

What you see here is basically a weeks worth of what I will be getting free

So each bowl in the picture is a different "Kind" of ramen, but to be honest they are pretty much all the same just with extra toppings. you can have egg, extra meat, wantan, a miso broth instead of meat or a thick soup. Unfortunately, my poor photography skills have failed to capture the spicy ramen picture just to the right. The spicy ramen is great when you have a cold, so I'm sure I will order it in the next month as Japan gets bitterly cold!

All the ramen is slightly customisable too, you can change the noodle consistency, hard or soft, the strength of the broth, how much fat, how spicy the spicy broth is, how much green onion or meat. I always go for less fat and move flavour, I can trick myself that this is healthy but I think I'm just trading fat for sodium. 

As can tell, no smoking at lunch, of course dinner is fine, you cant get lung cancer at dinner!

So today I opted for the wantan-men, and I of course got gyouza, which are a Japanese fried version of Chinese dumplings. I am a massive fan of gyouza and to me, if your ramen shop doesn't serve gyouza then you aren't much of a ramen shop. I suppose they are because they do sell ramen, but still. Anyway, gyouza are the things in the top right of this picture, the biggest plate of things.

I will admit I have eaten everything on here at least once, no regrets!

Something else I love about ramen shops is the extras, there are so many delicious food you can order with your ramen. Such as; Fried chicken, plates of meat, gyouza with cheese on top, deep fried fish and another personal favourite of mine, deep fried cheese wrapped in a type of pastry. AMAZING! Therefore, if you can think of anything fried and unhealthy, a good ramen shop will most likely sell it in some form. Oh, I forgot to add that they also sell gyouza with cheese on top, see, everything!

So today I got the wantan-men and the gyouza which looks a little like this:

1 down 30 to go

Which should have costed ¥1030 ($10.50/£6.50) but only cost me ¥380 ($4/£2.50), I am perfectly happy with that, and of course it was delicious, however, there was feeling in the back of my mind reminding me that I will be having this flavour for the rest of the month. I think this could end up being like when you set your favourite song as your morning alarm, sounds like such a good idea until you start hating it for bringing you the pain of being ripped from your comfortable bed every morning.

For now I think it will still all be good. Another day, another ramen! 

Prologue

So, as the title suggests this is a blog about eating Japanese ramen everyday for 1 month. I'll give you the ins and outs here.

So I came to Japan about 2 years ago to teach English and like any excited traveler I decided to eat everything! Of course that can lead to some unpleasant experiences, mostly at cheap sushi restaurants where the "acquired tastes" are less than high quality. But every traveler makes mistakes, and then they learn! (I advise you not to get the sea urchin at ¥100 ($1/£0.60) sushi places)

And that is when I discovered ramen, noodles in a meat soup usually with pork, green onions, and other toppings. DELICIOUS. Every area of Japan has a different ramen. For example in Sapporo they have butter ramen:

Because why not add solidified fat to your bowl of salty, fatty meat soup?

Of course like all other foods, there are also ramen chain restaurants, and there is one in my town that I frequent, at one point I was going twice a week (Oops). So the restaurant I went to is called Rairaitei or 来来亭 in kanji.

You're not exactly going to miss this restaurant by driving past it are you?

On my second visit I found they had a point card, after 20 bowls you got ¥1000 off and because of a misunderstanding with my Japanese friend translating the card I thought after 40 bowls I get a free bowl every month. I didn't realise my folly until I got my complete 40 bowls

Instead I got that gold card, please imagine it as shiny and new, I didn't take a before photo

So, instead I got a gold version of their point card, which means I needed to buy another 40 bowls. Which, if you know what this blog is about, I succeeded in doing. It also turned out that it wasn't one bowl of ramen free a month, it was one month of free ramen. A very big difference, especially if you are talking about the effects on your health!

Yup, just like that, another 40 bowls

At the point I filled my needed 80 bowls they took my name, address and photo. Then, I waited a few days and I received my free pass in the post.

I have NO idea what this all says, I will find out tomorrow

So, as you can see above, I get one free bowl of ramen everyday from the 14th October until the 13th November. And, because I'm both cheap (A free meal, every day for a month! Yes please!) and a scientist (Well, I've been teaching for 2 years but I was one), I decided to find out what would happen if I ate a bowl of ramen everyday for 1 month. And thus, this blog was born. I am currently not sure of the rules of the card, I will have my Japanese friend translate it so i know what I can do, but I will be eating at least one bowl of basic ramen everyday for this upcoming coming month. 

I'll be updating as I go,  I have decided to not change my normal behaviour other than this. Not exactly a scientific experiment but I hope it will be interesting enough. I work out weight training 2-3 times a week (don't think I'm like Schwarzenegger though, just a skinny white guy trying to bulk up a bit) and do 1.5 hrs or Karate every Wednesday (Again, I'm no Daniel-san, or if you are more of the new generation of Karate kid, Jaden Smith). Other than that, I will be doing this with no extra exercise.

Last night I went to my local onsen (Japanese public baths) and used the body fat percentage machine to check my body fat and my weight. I am currently 77kg and 18.1-21.6% fat, with a BMI of 22.6. The internet tells me that is acceptable and not unhealthy. 

My prediction is that I will gain a fair amount of weight, but I think the biggest thing that will happen is that I will be so sick of ramen that I won't want to eat it again for months. But I hope it just means sick of that ramen place, cause if you cant tell, i really love ramen. 

Wish me luck, and thanks for reading. I'm hoping this month will be interesting for us all. But chances are you wont be gaining as much fat just by reading about it, no promises though!

Welcome to 1 Month of Ramen!

So as you can guess this is a blog about cats..... haha nah, its about me eating ramen for one month.