It’s been raining buckets in Tokyo and nothing chases the rainy blues away better than a steaming hot bowl of ramen.

Lunch was at Ichiran, which serves really nice ramen in a strange setting. First, you buy a ticket for a bowl of ramen from a vending machine outside the shop. After which you fill up an order form, indicating various preferences for your ramen like thickness of soup, firmness of noodles and if you want their “secret sauce” or not. After which, you go sit in a booth all by yourself, and wait. A pair of mysteious hands will appear with your order of ramen and pass it to you below the red curtain. It’s all very interesting, as from start to finish, you more or less don’t have to even see or interact with a single human being. Their Japanese website has a good video illustrating this process.

If you drink up all your soup, the words at the bottom of the bowl say something like “The last drop of soup, is the one enjoyed best”.