Just off the elevator is a large vending machine, which serves as the bill of fare. There are several rows of small pictures, showing what is available and how much it costs. Beneath each picture you’ll see a button. Insert your money, and press the button to select, for example, your bowl of soup as a starting point. A small ticket drops into the well at the bottom of the machine. Press adjacent buttons to add noodles, extra noodles, pork, extra pork, mushrooms, scallions, beer, tea, and so on. All this sets you back about 12 or 15 bucks if you’re really trying.

Tickets in hand, you enter the “dining room” through a sliding door.  Once inside, you are greeted by a series of blinking lights on an electronic board, indicating where a seat might be available. Here’s where things get interesting.

Depending on where a vacancy may be, you enter right or left into one of two parallel corridors, each with a row of backless stools set up at a long counter. Kind of like sitting at a bar, except that your little piece of counter real estate is enclosed by a partition on either side, effectively shutting you off from, well, just about everything and everyone in the place.  Behind you, and very close behind you at that, is a wall with a shelf containing little packets of tissues. You are free to take and use these as napkins, should you require them. There are also signs admonishing diners to forgo cell phone usage, smoking and loud conversation (in the event you are dining a deux—a blind date?) Back in your little area, you’ll find a water fountain, a pair of chopsticks, a miniscule rectangular metal tray, an information sheet and a pencil. More about these later.

In front of you hangs a curtain which prevents you from seeing into the catwalk-like serving area situated between the two dining corridors, or the kitchen, off to the back of the place. Somehow, someone knows you’ve arrived, and a hand slips under the curtain to set a plastic cup near your water fountain. That’s your cue. Place your order chits on the metal tray (see, they fit perfectly!) and slide the tray to the edge of the counter along with the information sheet, which you should have completed by now. This is a multiple choice sheet, and allows you, within the parameters of what you’ve ordered with your chits, to very finely adjust the flavor profile of your bowl of Ramen. Want your soup without any garlic, just a little or a whole lot? How about “richness” expressed as a function of the amount of fat in the broth? A little bit? Medium? Artery clogging? It’s all there, including spiciness, amount and type (green or white) of scallions, firmness of the noodles, and more.

Now, lulled into a contemplative state by virtue of the semi-isolation, those of us raised Roman Catholic will find it hard, in the relatively few moments it takes for the food to appear, to resist comparison of this unique dining venue with that of the confessional booth. The anonymity, the admission of one’s deeply personal, perhaps hedonistic, predilections, the disembodied voice murmuring in an unfamiliar language…. But here at Ichiran, in place of absolution, one is blessed with an absolutely delicious bowl of steaming hot broth containing perfectly cooked noodles and tender pork, and a proprietary spice blend that will make you sit up and repent any wrongdoings. The broth is the first thing to impress. It is meaty and rich, and wonderfully balanced. The noodles are so fresh, so beautifully textured, with an exquisite mouth-feel. Within moments the food before you, much more effectively than the partitions around you, will have you transported to your own little piece of paradise.

In reading this description, you may have conjured up an image of monastic silence at Ichiran. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is, first and foremost, slurping aplenty. And, of course, the typical cacophony of kitchen sounds which the thin curtains do nothing to abate. In addition, I noticed that every so often a simple but catchy melody, of just a few bars in length, was piped into the room.  When I inquired, sotto voce, of my Japanese dining companion what this might be, he simply smiled and said, “Oh that. That’s just Ramen music.”

Who knew?

I began to wonder if dining experiences in this enigmatic culture offered any other such musical matches.  Tempura Tunes? Sounds of Sushi? 

There are things I will just never understand.