We were recently in Japan, and at the risk of being thrown out of this club, and being horsewhipped by @Parsnipity on the steps, I have to tell you that our main focus was not food. Still we had to eat, and in our time in Tokyo we were at the Station Hotel, perched on the east edge of the main railway station. More on the hotel elsewhere, but the connection with food is that the Tokyo station is a vast labyrinth of eating opportunities from the bad to the surprisingly good.
First an overall map.
Level 1 (Street level):
I’ve marked which way lies south. The Station Hotel is perched along and above the west edge (“Marunouchi”). Some of the food stuff I’ll talk about is on the lower level at the southeast edge (top left of map). Here’s that level (I’ve a subtle dashed rectangle to mark the spot:
Let me stress that there are many, many food areas all over, both on the main area, below it (in sectors beyond what I show below – look for the story of the sorrow of my unagi), and above. What I show below merely scratches one edge at one level (the stuff in the faint rectangle above).
We chose “Ramen Street” on our first morning, getting there before the rush:
The stalls here are supposedly branches of famous Ramen spots in Tokyo, but I hadn’t the time beforehand to research this, nor have I been able to after. We picked the first one we got to. Like others, your soup begins with a board
that leads to a machine:
Once the very helpful staff told me I needed to first pay, then select (and end transaction by asking for change), it was smooth sailing. We got our tickets, stood on line to get in, and were served efficiently.
I picked
with an egg add-on, and got this:
I gotta say it was spectacular.
Let me end with a view on a quiet afternoon of the Southwest entrance of the Tokyo train station taken from one of the hotel balconies overlooking the station:
