Still hungry after the kushikatsu, Hiroko wanted ramen. So we walked over to the ever-so-sketchy fire hazard that is kaotan ramen. This place is typical of what makes Tokyo awesome: the building itself is patchworked shacks lashed together with blue tarp and exposed wiring. The background music was bad Bollywood 80's hits, the staff Chinese and middle eastern. The menus scrawled on the walls included bad (not "cool" bad, just bad) random artwork about the various specials, the tables are low and cramped. The whole place is just grungy and dingy and nasty and dirty and greasy. Love it.
Hiroko got ramen with a double-yoke'd boiled egg and I went for a collection of sides: flavored beef, boiled wantons, and gyoza. It was all stupendously good, cheap, and perfect.
Tokyo is brilliant specifically because nasty little places like this on the ass-corner of Aoyama Cemetery, that have never even heard of health codes, not only spring up randomly on street corners, but in fact become veritable institutions that command near-religious followings and long lines of worshippers.
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