ramen.jpg

Tokyo Station's Ramen Street, a ramen lover's food-court nirvana, where eight top ramen shops lining a subterranean mall hallway compete for commuters' yen.

(Michael Russell, The Oregonian)

TOKYO -- Not long off the plane, surrounded by black-suited salarymen, I steadied myself on a shallow wooden counter and cradled a bowl of thick ramen noodles like a prisoner guarding his dinner. It was 3 a.m. back in Portland. I hadn't slept on the flight.

About an hour earlier, I had stumbled off the Narita airport express train at Tokyo Station and checked into a nearby business hotel. My 200-square-foot room, which somehow had space for a mini espresso machine, a foot massager and a multi-jet shower, had a Western-style bed with soft recessed lighting in the headboard and a button that launched a looping synth track that sounded like outtakes from the "Twin Peaks" theme. It looked like heaven.

But as sleep was taking over, an email popped up on my phone from New Yorker-turned-Tokyo-ramen-star

. He had one directive: "Make sure you go downstairs in Tokyo Station and eat at the Ramen Street."

So here I was, having navigated my way to the lower floor of the train station's sterile subterranean mall, stood in a 40-minute line and purchased a ramen ticket from a vending machine, waiting for a bowl at Rokurinsha.

Here, at the shop that helped popularize tsukemen-style ramen (where noodles and broth come separately), a bowl of light yellow noodles arrives first, followed by another filled with an almost sludgy brown broth. I picked up a few long noodle ropes with my chopsticks, dipped them in the murky broth and slurped.

Revelatory ramen: Rokurinsha, in Tokyo Station's Ramen Street, serves their ramen tsukemen-style, meaning the broth and noodles arrive separately.

It was astounding. The noodles so chewy they practically bounced on the teeth, the egg perfectly soft boiled. And that broth! So far beyond the dishwater served at many U.S. Japanese restaurants, this was definitively funky. I imagined a stock pot bubbling with fermented fish heads and pig femurs. If that's paints an unappetizing picture, just imagine Rokurinsha's broth in league with other pungent delicacies, a funky French cheese, an aged kim chi, a pungent Belgian gueuze. (I learned later that the broth is simmered for 13 hours with dried mackerel and pork bones.)

It wouldn't be my last bowl. In fact, with seven other shops nearby, it wasn't even my last bowl of the night.

An unexpected obsession

I hadn't come to Tokyo, this "fuel-injected adrenaline rush into a neon-bright future," per my breathless Rough Guide, to gorge on ramen. OK, yes, I'd seen "

," read

and heard about the Shinyokohama ramen museum. But there were other things on my mind. Sushi for one. I had dreamed of eating at Sukiyabashi Jiro, the $400, 20-minute sushi restaurant tucked inside a Ginza subway station. And I'd wanted to try fugu (poisonous puffer fish) ever since "The Simpsons" episode in which Homer faced a near-death experience with an inexpertly sliced blowfish.

A ramen ticket vending machine

I ate plenty of sushi, as well as raw chicken sashimi, donburi, a kaiseki meal, other noodles (soba, who knew?) and drank sake from a vending machine, Champagne from a food cart (take that, Portland) and even

. But ramen took over the trip like I took over my friend Toshio's guest room. Each morning I found myself scouring ramen blogs, searching for hot spots near the day's tourist destinations (as if ramen shops weren't destinations in their own right).

Ramen: Three Portland bowls worth a slurp

Wafu ramen at Wafu

Wafu's signature (and most popular) ramen has a tonkotsu-style broth made from slow-simmered pork and chicken bones, miso, sesame and black garlic -- the perfect foundation for pork shoulder, bamboo shoots, scallions, mushrooms and Wafu's thin, house-made noodles. 3113 S.E. Division St., 503-236-0205,

Hybrid ramen at Biwa

My current favorite bowl in Portland, from Biwa, takes a hybrid approach, with a broth made from painstakingly simmered pork and chicken bones, a ham hock for smokiness and hints of soy, mirin and salt that lands somewhere between tonkotsu, shoyu and shio. Toppings include glazed pork belly, braised bean sprouts and the finest shoyu-marinated, orange-yolked, soft-boiled egg this side of the Pacific Ocean. 215 S.E. Ninth Ave., 503-239-8830,

Vegan ramen at Boke Bowl

Only in Portland? Boke Bowl assembles what might be the ultimate vegan ramen, with Boke's noodles swimming in a caramelized fennel dashi broth topped with Japanese eggplant, rice cakes and, if you like, smoked and brined tofu. 1028 S.E. Water Ave., 503-719-5698,

-- Michael Russell

A little history: Ramen, like most Asian noodle dishes, has roots in China (an old-fashioned term for ramen is chuka-soba, meaning Chinese-style noodles). But the Japanese have tweaked and formalized this dish so much, it's now distinctly Japanese.

Yes, ramen noodles spawned instant ramen, that college dorm staple. But in Japan even humble neighborhood ramen spots feature time-tested recipes, quality ingredients and, sometimes, cult followings. The reputations of each spot are bolstered and dissected in magazines and on TV shows, the same way Americans obsess over Kim Kardashian or Kristen Stewart.

I expected to find a hidebound ramen traditionalism, with each shop devoted to one of the four primary broth varieties -- tonkotsu (thick pork), shoyu (soy sauce), shio (clear salt) or miso -- but that wasn't the case.

Some shops mix and match, hence the memorable tonkotsu-miso bowl I had in Tokyo's hipster enclave, Shimokitazawa. Many offer three or four different broths, dozens of toppings and a choice of noodles with different sizes and cooking times.

Other chefs are experimenting with broths made from crab or lobster. After six years perfecting, and earning respect with, his classic shio ramen, Orkin is experimenting today with a broth made from dried fish, scallop and shrimp and noodles that are wide and flat.

Other expectations were shattered. Despite Tokyo's reputation as one of the most expensive cities in the world, I didn't eat a bowl over $9.

A tonkotsu-miso ramen in Tokyo's hipster enclave, Shimokitazawa.

Japan's ramen craze has also reached our shores, with respectable scenes in New York and Los Angeles. And while I saw more ramen diversity than I expected in Japan, American chefs have the advantage (or disadvantage, depending on your perspective) of a clean slate.

Just look at Portland, where Boke Bowl serves a seafood-miso ramen you can top with fried chicken, fried oysters or smoked tofu. Last year, Le Pigeon did a foie gras ramen. Over the St. Patrick's Day weekend, downtown culinary incubator KitchenCru did one with corned beef, cabbage and a scotch egg. And both Boke Bowl and Miho Izakaya prepare ramens with vegan broth and toppings (though sometimes made with egg, wheat-based ramen noodles are often vegan, if not gluten-free). Perhaps, like the prefecture-specific ramen varieties found throughout Japan, Portland is building a regional specialty in vegan ramen.

In just over a week in Japan, I ate just over a bowl of ramen a day, with many of the most memorable, including Rokurinsha's tsukemen, found at Tokyo Ramen Street.

No ramen in Portland reaches those heights, but for initiates, I've listed three interesting bowls worth seeking out (see sidebar). And in the months ahead, I plan to take a closer look at our local options. Keep an eye here at

for updates.

-- Michael Russell