While living in Japan, one of my favorite foods to eat was ramen. I lived in a city called Fukuoka in 2015 and for the first half of 2017. Fukuoka is famous for its “tonkotsu” pork ramen. My favorite ramen restaurant in Japan is called Ichiran. This restaurant lets you customize your ramen all the way down to the firmness of the noodle. My favorite part of Ichiran ramen is their trademark chili sauce. Today I ate American ramen for the first time (not counting instant ramen). I went with my classmate Ryoji to a place in downtown Olympia called Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya. The ramen was good although not quite as good as any of the ramen I ate in Japan. I found it strange that it called itself an izakaya since it had little in common with Japanese izakaya. An izakaya is basically a Japanese pub where you order several small courses. Kizuki, while having relatively authentic food, was just a standard western style restaurant. One interesting thing I noticed was that the menu was in English, Japanese, and Chinese. Ryoji and I spoke in Japanese while eating, and this coupled with the food made us both nostalgic to go back to Japan.
