26 October 2025
Vegan ramen is expensive
Ochanomizu to Asakusa
Tonight I walked from where I am staying in Ochanomizu, to Asakusa. It is not very far, but it started raining again which took me to a ramen place, promoted as Halal ramen with a very high google rating, which did not advertise prices on the window, that was very expensive. Most of what they called Halal was wagyu and so a bowl of that was $50 or more, therefore instead I got vegan Halal, which means the vegetables were cut with a ceremonial knife while a prayer was said. It was good, great quality noodles and I paid for the extra chilli, but that made it about $20. A normal bowl of pork ramen is around $10, so I guess you pay for Halalification.
It should be sunny in the morning, so it will be a hiking day. I have selected a shorter hike in case it is too muddy. Reviews of it talk about leeches, so I will wear my running tights under my shorts, although I also read you can just flick the leeches off with your finger nail. I do not recall ever having leeches stuck to my leg in previous years so this seems unusual.
It was not raining when I set off, but everything was still wet, which makes for great shiny light shadows.
I did a lot of skirting around the edges this evening, here are the edges of Akihabara.
A nice bridge, the buildings were disappearing into mist, the Skytree was basically invisible.
Further skirting around Akihabara.
The one pounder. Disgraceful.
Time to head down some damp alleyways.
As always, I enjoyed following the elevated rail line, usually there are interesting things crammed under them.
Cool bridge. I managed to not get run over.
After walking along the river for a while trying to spot the Skytree hidden in the mist, I arrived at the back end of Asakusa, skirting around the shrine.
It was mot raining, so I did not head into the covered shopping streets. I took a photo to record that I did not go into them.
Here is my expensive vegan Halal ramen. The brown thing is a mushroom.
And then it started raining again. I headed back to a random subway and changed trains 3 times to get back to my hotel area, then stood in the rain to take a photo fo the rain.