I called this a photographer's guide because that's the angle most people expect from me. But the honest truth is that photography has very little to do with it. I eat ramen because it's good and available at 2am and requires zero planning. You walk past a shop, it smells right, you go in. This has never failed me.
What I've picked up after years of this is less a guide to specific restaurants — those change, close, develop lines that aren't worth standing in — and more a set of principles for eating well in a city that takes noodles seriously.
On Styles
Tokyo ramen is primarily shoyu — soy sauce broth, clear, brown, complex without being heavy. It's cleaner than the pork bone tonkotsu you get down in Fukuoka, more savoury than shio (salt) broth. If you walk into a random ramen shop in Tokyo and point at something, you're probably getting shoyu. This is a fine outcome. It's what the city does well.
If you want something heavier, tsukemen is worth trying once. Cold noodles, thick concentrated dipping broth on the side — you drag the noodles through it and eat them separately. It sounds worse than it tastes. I'm in the "love it" camp. Not everyone is, and that's fine too.
On Chains
Most food writing treats ramen chains with suspicion, as though eating at Ichiran marks you as someone who doesn't know any better. I don't share this view. Ichiran is genuinely good — the solo booths are designed for people eating alone at odd hours, which describes most of my ramen consumption, and the ramen is consistent and excellent. There's no shame in it. The shame would be walking past a good bowl because it came from somewhere with multiple locations.
Fuunji, near Shinjuku station, does tsukemen that's worth the wait if the line isn't too long. Konjiki Hototogisu runs a small-batch operation and changes their menu regularly. These are places worth looking up. But I'd still tell you: don't spend your whole trip chasing a ranked list. Walk around and eat what smells good.
The Actual Advice
Walk up to a ramen shop. If there are locals eating there, go in. Sit at the counter if there's a counter. Order what the person next to you is having if you don't know the menu. Eat slowly. Tokyo's floor on ramen quality is very high — the worst ramen I've eaten here has been fine. You are not going to make a mistake.
The best ramen I've had in this city came from a shop I walked past at midnight because it was lit up and I was hungry. I don't remember the name. I've been back to that block and I'm not sure I found the same one. That's fine. There was another one next to it.
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