Long Lines for Ramen

“In the dim light of sunrise, I stood for an hour to get sushi at a tiny Tsukiji restaurant whose name I couldn’t figure out. On the top floor of a department store, I waited for a table for one to open up at a hushed, jam-packed tonkatsu restaurant. I waited for ramen—for a lot of ramen, and especially for one particular bowl, at Ginza Kagari, a tiny counter in the labyrinth of the Ginza subway station. There, I spent an hour behind a slow-moving line of fewer than a dozen people, only to be told politely by a porter that the restaurant would run out of broth with the patron before me. I came back even earlier the next day and waited again, for nearly two hours this time, mostly standing still, occasionally shuffling forward. I watched harried commuters power-walk by, I listened to the murmured Japanese flirtations of the young couple in front of me, I read a few chapters of a novel on my phone, until at last I made it inside.”

From “Tokyo’s Long Lines Lead to Magic (and Life-Changing Ramen)” by Helen Rosner for Afar; Photo by Ruthy Yang (@ruthyyang) 

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