Visiting the Koyama Ramen Shop

[rakko]

Following my post (here) about my friends and I visiting the ramen shop, many people asked me for more information about getting there.

So I've finally put this post together to add a little from my experiences to the information already circulating on the net from other fans. It was thanks to other fan reports that we were able to find our way there.







So as people probably already know, it's the Ryutaro Ramen Shop lcoated in Sobudai-mae and they're open Monday to Saturday from 7pm (and you can see this information on the menu along with the phone number)

This is the English version of the menu:




Getting to Sobudai-mae





Obviously the train connections you'll need to make will depend on where you're starting out from.

Sobudai-mae is on the Odakyu-Odawara Line (小田急小田原線) which runs from Shinjuku to Odawara.

The ramen shop is marked with the star on the left.



The night my friends and I went, we were coming from Odawara after a day trip to Mt Fuji. But afterwards, to get back to our hotel in Tokyo we took the Local line to Machida and then changed to the Odakyu Odawara Line Exp. to Shinjuku.

My major recommendation though is that you plan your excursion with the Hyperdia website:

Just click on the English link in the top left hand corner of the page and then enter your starting point and SOBUDAIMAE (it took me a few tries to work out what spelling the website was looking for). It will offer you a variety of routes and connections to any place you're looking to get, just play around with the travel times till you find an option with the least amount of sections.

I always use this site extensively for any trip to Japan, especially last time when we were needing to get from Tokyo to Sendai and Osaka to Fukui for NEWS concerts, as well as leaving our organised day trip in Odawara and heading back to Tokyo via Sobudai-mae.


Approaching our destination. The display inside the train telling us it's the next stop (in hiragana, kanji and romaji).





When you reach the station, take the North Exit





Once down on the street it's very close by. This photo is taken from the station and the restaurant sign is the yellow one on the right under the rainbow sign.




Getting closer ...



And looking back to the staion





Before our trip I also played around with finding the location on Google Street View, where you can see that you just head in under the sign and the restaurant is at the back of the alcove.







We were lucky the night we went that there was no queue, in fact there were only a couple of people inside eating. So we just headed to the back. It definitely started to fill up as time passed but there was still no queue when we left after a couple of hours.

So here are a couple of final pics from inside (pics of our food can be found in my earlier post).





 

Comments

[manonpikamishi.livejournal.com]

i want to go back to the ramen shop now haha...food there was delicious and koyama's mommy is so nice!! it seems she still has the same posters of koyama up :]

[chrestomanci]

thanks for this! I'm keeping it in mind in case I ever make it to japan!

[midoriho.livejournal.com]

oh goshh tysm ~~
adding to mems so i can refer back when i get there eventually ;D

[roushen-yume.livejournal.com]

thanks for sharing!*hugs*

definitely adding this to memories ^_^

[honeyshikido.livejournal.com]

OMG!!!
I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!
*huggies*

[ungalad.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you very much for all the information! ♥ You're awesome.

[itsumademo-news.livejournal.com]

thanks so much for this post! :D

Thank you very much!!!

[nanasse.livejournal.com]

I really wanna go there but I couldn't find anything about it...
I love u xD
I'm so happy!
I can go there this summer ^___^

[fushigi10tenshi.livejournal.com]

they've got posters! yay~
thanks for sharing :D

[islandgurl84.livejournal.com]

thanks for sharing.would love to visit kei-chan's family's ramen shop. love the guy so much.

[inala.livejournal.com]

yup, I love him heaps too, and that's why I was kind of nervous about it, but in the end I was so happy to be able to tell his mother he has fans in Australia!

[shavadava.livejournal.com]

I'll try to go next time, thank you !!

[aiyama-kin.livejournal.com]

this post really helpfull, i hope can use it when i go to find that place
thank you for sharing ^^

[yamashitatrang.livejournal.com]

AAAAAAAAAAAAA XD XD XD XDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Soooooooo happy ^O^ Thank you very much o(^_^)o
I'll go there in the Golden week (^_^)/
Btw, today is Kei-chan's birthday :D Happy birthday to Koyama Keiichiro-kun \(^_^)/

[minri.livejournal.com]

thank u very much.

[fromyesterday.livejournal.com]

thanks so much! I will go to Japan this summer. I hope I can go to this nice ramen shop! :D

<3333

[elizajet.livejournal.com]

Ah! I want to go but I will feel like too much of a stalker doing it- same with visiting Aiba-chan's family restaurant lol.

[inala.livejournal.com]

You know, I felt that way in the past too and spent a long time thinking I couldn't do it. But if you've read my post about our dinner there, it was nothing like that at all! We had a great time and were made feel very welcome, even more when we confirmed we were fans.

[fromyesterday.livejournal.com]

thanks! I'll go to Japan on Wednesday.. and if I can I might go there on Thursday (lol) well I'll have a lot of time to waste around 7-8pm so why not go there? XD thanks for your post ^^

:)

[nanasse.livejournal.com]

thanks again for this post! It is very useful!
I am going there tomorrow, so I checked a last time this post before it.^
^_____^

Takagi Taro here (Shane)

[(Anonymous)]

Hey all of you. I am Taro (Shane). I used to live near Sobudai Mae. I went to Ryutaro all the time and saw many of my friends there. I am close with the crew at Ryutaro to include Yasuyo and Isamu. I did have a picture of me with Yasuyo dressed as Jack Sparrow in there. I think I know some of you in this comment area. I just want to say hey and I miss Japan. I am in Korea now and it really sucks here. You guys take care. Shane

[suketeru.livejournal.com]

Thank you for all the info ^_^

[uchihi.livejournal.com]

I am planning to go there too!! thanks for this precious info!

[vinyaromeniel.livejournal.com]

I'll be able to go pretty soon so this description pretty much helped, thanks so much :)

And I discovered it's only a thirty minute train ride away from where I'll be living :D

And the google street viewer is just plain awesome I discovered

[inala.livejournal.com]

It really isn't that hard to find at all ... having just been there for my second time I didn't even need to double check anything. And even though we had to change trains it's just a matter of getting off the express and waiting for the local train to come through on the same platform.

When are you off to Japan? It was very sad for me to only be there 10 days ... time to start planning for another trip.

[(Anonymous)]

is it just me or does that look like Koyama in the last photo?

I WILL GET THERE!!!!!!!! i hope to go atleast twice while i'm here... you should be here with me. :(

[(Anonymous)]

oh right, didn't sign in. damn. oh well. you probably know who it is, anyway... lol.

Thank you for creating this guide

[(Anonymous)]

We went to Tokyo like 2 weeks ago as part of our study aboard, and the very first thing we did was go and find this ramen shop. Your guide made it very esay for us to find it, and it was our first time in Tokyo! It was so much fun finding it and We got to speak to Koyama's mom. She looks very much like him! She is such a sweet lady, she know little english and she spoke to us about why we were there and how long, etc. There's a poster of the Sakura Girl CD poster on the wall now with Koyama's autograph on it! The food is delicious btw, their Gyoza's is amazing!!! I want to return there whenever I go back to Japan!

[jecrew.livejournal.com]

I found this post a long time ago and
was super jealous! Now I found out I am
going to Japan myself and I'm making
preparations. (^.^) I'm really bad with
directions but I'm pretty sure I'll find it.
It's the building to the right of the stripy pole,
right? Or is it possible for you to give me
exact directions from the station? Also, could you
recomend something for me? \(^u^)/

Hime~

[inala.livejournal.com]

Hi ... hope you find your way there and have a great visit.

The yellow sign above the stripy pole is the restaurant sign. You go in the entrance right under the sign (so yes, to the right) and there are a couple of stores in the little arcade. The restaurant is on the left at the end - it's not very far inside.

From the station, as you can see from my photo you don't really need directions, because you can see it. The main thing is to take the North exit and once you're down on the street (with your back to the station) it really is straight ahead. You can see the yellow sign, under the rainbow sign - on the right near the Century 21 real estate office.

It's much closer than it looks in the photo. And if you click on my photos you can view larger versions of them, that should help.

Good luck.

P.S. as for recommending something. The menu is in English so you can work out what you'd like to eat. And it depends on what you generally like. I like the gyoza, the miso ramen and the yakisoba, but there are some spicier ramen that aren't really what I like, but my friends who've had those really liked them too.