| Ramen |
November 15, 2018
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| He liked ramen. Ramen are noodles originally from China, but when they were imported to this country, they changed to fit this country's people's taste preferences. The first introduction was more than 100 years ago. Since that time, many ramen shops have appeared and disappeared, and various new types of ramen have been produced. When he was a child, ramen was one of several typical restaurant foods, along with curry rice, hamburger steak, spaghetti Neapolitan (tomato sauce based pasta), omelette rice. There was no pizza, no hamburgers, and no beef bowl yet. Ramen had only one type of taste ~a soy sauce base with dried anchovy stock soup. Noodles were thin, curly, and yellow. There were 2 typical ingredients on the top of the ramen ~boiled bamboo shoots and steamed fish paste, which was originally round shaped with white and red coloring. It was sliced thin, diagonally, and restaurant usually put in two pieces in it. Soon instant  ramen was invented and each household started to make ramen at home. Ramen shops started to offer side menus, like gyoza (fried dumplings), chahan (stir fried rice). He could say that this period of ramen was too plain. When he was a college student, he ate hamburgers and pizza for the first time. He sometimes ate ramen, but for him, as a college student, cheap and plenty were the priorities, so he didn't have any memories of ramen. He started to work. One time when he went to a big city on a business trip, he happened to enter one ramen shop. The ramen shop served pig-bone stock soup. It was milky. It was the first time for him to eat this type of ramen. The noodles were also different from the normal type. They were white and straight, very thin but tough. The taste of ramen was amazing. Whenever he went to this city, it was his routine to stop by this shop. As for his city, a friend of his recommended one ramen shop. It was located 2 km or so from his house, but he had never been there. Once he went there, the shop became his most frequent shop to go. He went there every week, even twice a week. At the shop, he always had a hard time to choose what he would eat. He liked their plain type ramen, chahan, spicy pork and cabbage rice bowl, spicy pork and egg rice bowl, as well as their spicy pork and egg ramen. Sometimes he skipped breakfast and ordered two dishes. Those dishes were totally different from other shops'. Especially their plain type ramen. He had never eaten that taste in other shops, but he couldn't say how. The soup was light colored and transparent. It was not oily, plain but somehow complicated. He couldn't even say whether the main seasoning was soy sauce or salt. The shop was run by an old couple. It was not so big and always crowded. Sometimes he went there at opening time, because he couldn't wait. He was able to small talk with the chef (owner) at those times. But his happy time suddenly stopped. At that time, he was super busy. He couldn't go to the shop because he worked even on holidays. He finally finished his work and went to the shop in a happy mood. It was for the first time in about three months. But, the shop was closed. They quit their restaurant! He asked his co-worker who went to the shop frequently (they sometimes would meet at the restaurant). The co-worker said, "Didn't you know? They closed their shop last week. For the last seven days, I went there every day, even twice a day, and ordered two dishes each time." He said proudly and it made him more miserable. He was very shocked. He couldn't accept the reality easily. He even made spicy pork and egg ramen by himself. He prepared the chili and pork, and mixed them with sugar, miso, and Japanese sake, and stir fried it with egg, and put it on the ramen noodles. The look was similar to the original, but the taste was very different, of course. But even so, he made it several times thinking about improving on each attempt, but it was not successful. He couldn't even make the plain type of ramen because he had no idea how to make that type of soup. He sighed every day. He even dreamed that he was eating the plain type of ramen. Now he had several ramen shops that he would sometimes go to. They were good, but not good enough to want to go each week. The next time that he went to the big city and stopped by the pork-bone ramen shop, he found the shop closed. Now there were many pork-bone ramen shops in his city, but he wasn't satisfied with any of them. Actually, there were so many ramen shops in his city and some of them had good reputations. He went to each shop that had customers lining up. Their tastes were not bad, but not as good as for the time he waited in line. Recently, when he was net-surfing, he happened to find a ramen shop which was located close to the original ramen shop that quit. People gave the shop high points. He wasn't the type of making importance to that type of point system, but when he saw a picture of the ramen that was on the web, it was very similar to the plain type ramen that the first shop served. Now he was wondering to go there soon or wait for a while. |
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*along with :並んで
*diagonally :斜めに
*as for :に関して言えば
*attempt :試み