Ramen

Outside of Raijin Ramen

Me eating ramen

After I visited Hawaii in 2017 and had the best ramen of my life I made it a goal to find a ramen place in Tucson that I loved. August 28th I did exactly that. My suitemate was battling a nasty cold and I offered to take her to get food off campus and we chose Raijin Ramen for dinner that night.

Miso ramen

Edamame

Melon Ramune

What I ate (left to right):

• Miso ramen
• Melon Ramune
• Edamame

We first started off sharing an order of edamame (steamed soy beans with sea salt) and they went in seconds. Thankfully once I finished I got my order of Ramune (or as I used to call it, Japanese soda) and was able to indulge in something until I got my order. My initial reaction to the miso ramen was how good it was. In general I LOVE noodles in all forms: pho, ramen, spaghetti, etc. so I would have been happy no matter what was placed in front of me. What I really enjoyed about this restaurant that I hadn't experienced in Hawaii was that if you finished all your noodles but had some leftover broth you could order more by telling the waiter "kae-dama," which is asking for a serving of only noodles.

A portion of the Raijin Ramen menu

On the menus at the restaurant there was a step by step on how to eat ramen which I found very comical and useful. There have been so many times when I'd take friends to get noodles for the first time and they'd ask me how to eat them, so by having this on the menu Raijin Ramen saved me a good five minutes of explaining.

My favorite part of the instructions is step number 5. Generally speaking slurping is rude in American culture however the way I was raised it was not rude to slurp and I was told it would make my soup taste better. I always tried to convince my friends of this but they never believed me, so it was nice to see my claim validated by the restaurant.

Door sunshade art

As I was eating I noticed the art on a sunshade used on a door. Although there is no context or information on the sunshade (probably meaning it's a common art piece), I can assume the premise is opposing forces which can be seen by the color contrast on the two figures however with my currently limited knowledge of Japanese art I am unable to further assess.

In case you're interested in checking out or trying Raijin Ramen here is the address (it's about 3 miles off of campus):
Raijin Ramen
2955 E Speedway Blvd
Tucson, AZ 85716