Ichiran / 一蘭 ~ I'm Made of Sugar!

Ichiran
一蘭

(Japanese follows. / 日本語は以下へ続く。)

Ichiran is a Tonkotsu (pork bone broth) soup ramen chain from Fukuoka city.
I've been the chain ramen shop once or twice many years ago, but I don't remember how it was.
They opened its first U.S. branch in Brooklyn in fall 2016, but a bowl costs 18.90 dollars before tax and I didn't wanna go all the way or more like pay that much so that I planned to visit one in Japan.

When I was staying in Shinjuku, I went to Ichiran in Kabukicho.
Though it's a weekday and raining, the branch had many tourists who didn't know the system well but no staff was helping.

This branch has eating space in the basement, and the ticket machine is also set there.

I got a ramen, 890 yen, without any toppings.

After that, I lined up in a section separated with red ropes and circled my preference.
There're Japanese, Chinese and English papers.
Here comes the problem, the staffs don't speak English so that many were trying to go to the eating area on their own. --- They should have put some signs if they're unable to communicate with non-japanese speakers.

It's been a while so that I chose "basic" on the list.

This board is showing which counter seats are vacant with green letter of "空," meaning vacant/open, and you're supposed to be led by a staff once it's ready.
However, this branch never let you sit and make you wait forever though there're plenty of seats available.
I ended up waiting for 15 minutes just by looking at this green "空" lights.

One of Ichiran's characteristic features is to eat in a booth, called "味集中ステーション (Aji Shu-chu- Station, a station to focus on the flavors)."

And this booth is designed to let you enjoy ramen without being bothered by the surroundings and also let you order without talking but just submitting a food ticket.

"Kaedama (替え玉, noodles refill)" can be ordered with the bag of chopsticks.

I placed the food ticket and the sheet with my preferences, then pressed the buzzer.

Chopsticks.

The back of the paper case has Kaedama, toppings and side menus.

About 5 minutes later, they brought my ramen from the front.

And when the staff was leaving, she closed down the bamboo blind.

It didn't have the characteristic Tonkotsu odor that much.
There's a lot of soup so that it's hard to see, but there're 2 slices of char siu, bamboo shoots, white and green leeks.
The red object in the center is a "Secret Tare" and it's a hot pepper sauce.
Little by little, I dissolved the sauce and the tangy condiment helped the aftertaste become light.

The soup looked oily but thanks to garlic and onions, it didn't taste too heavy nor had the pork bone stinky scent.
It's creamy and flavorful without being too rich.
Though it'd smell later, but I was glad to have added garlic to the soup.

Char siu was thinly sliced and small, and nothing was special.

I circled "basic" for the noodles, but they're much softer than I wished, like al dente firmness, but they're the softest noodles that I've had with Tonkotsu soup, which usually has firmly boiled noodles.
These skinny noodles were silky and caught a good amount of creamy soup, and they're tasty.
The ramen was ok, but definitely not wroth 20 bucks.