NOZAWA ONSEN: Toyo Ramen

What type of food comes to your mind when you're faced with heavy snowfall like this?

Given that we've had shabu shabu and sukiyaki ( read here) already, we decided that the best dinner we could have after fighting thru the cold and wind is a bowl of hot soup i.e ramen.

A quick google search tells us that the ramen we should try when we are in nozawa is Toyo Ramen.

Now now, this place is SUPER difficult to find, to be honest, I don't even know how to give you instructions to where it's located. If hunger games or battle royale was held here and you hid at this restaurant, I think you might be the eventual winner even without killing anybody. Provided you're lucky enough to have this place avoid being in the danger zone la. 

We were asking almost every single passerby with our broken Japanese for directions, and really most of the time is blind leading the blind because most on the main street are tourists and... yeah. 

A couple of times we thought we struck Jackpot because people were very confidently pointing directions to us, but you know something is wrong when you walk towards the direction you were being pointed to, ask someone else and they point you to the direction that you just came from hmm... 

But I have to give it to these people, they point with such confidence... It just never crossed my mind to doubt them ! I think all of us ought to work hard to achieve this skill, I can only imagine how useful it is when it comes to work. 

Anyway, after what felt like a wild goose chase... We FINALLY reached the restaurant. 

It's this really hole in the wall kinda small family run ramen shop.  I think we did make a booking but I'm not 100%. All I can say is that, it was SO crowded !

Normal shoyu ramen for me. The broth was amazing ! The only thing I didn't like about this bowl was that there were SO MUCH beansprouts. I don't really eat beansprouts :/

Nick had the spicy miso 

No pictures for what was the highlight of this meal for me.... I think the stars of this restaurant is actually their Karage chicken, gyoza and fried squid.

So good. The karage chicken was not oily, the batter was light and the chicken was SOOOO juicy! Same goes for the home made gyoza. Super generous with the fillings and they were so flavourful.
Fried squid is fried squid la. squid is always good.

Toya Ramen 
9347 Toyosato Nozawaonsen-Mura | Tokiwaya Ryokan B1, Nozawaonsen-mura, Shimotakai-gun 389-2502, Nagano Prefecture
Mon- Fri : 11.30-12.30pm, 6-8pm

NOZAWA ONSEN: Daimon Soba

Adelaide's heating up again, over the last 2 days the temperature has been consisting >33 degrees. And it's making me really uncomfortable. It's like I don't want to be home because the whole apartment feels like an oven. Yeah, I could turn on the air con, but after turning on the air con for awhile I feel very cold, so I turn it off, and it becomes an oven again.

So I leave my house and try to get some fresh air, BUT there is no breeze on the streets either! And over the last 2 days for some weird reason I've been getting some urticaria; I don't know if because of the heat or because my skin is dry. Oh God, I've been scratching from am to pm. 

And so over the last 2 days, I've really been looking forward to the cold; i.e my next ski trip in Jan.

Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go skiing in Nozawa. I remember we were really having alot of troubles deciding which restaurants to go. www.nozawaholidays.com is pretty good; they have this free restaurant and bar guide, but what I really like is reading people's recommendation and seeing what they order when they're in a city because seriously, there's a limit to the number of meals we can eat a day.

Thru nozawaholiday's restaurant guide  ( click) + word of mouth from our ryokan hosts we spent our first dinner at Daimon Soba

This is a family run restaurant of 3rd generation soba makers. The owner's son is a champion ski jumper by the way.

Nick's cold soba

My soba in hot broth. I usually go for the cold soba, but because of my night of terror the night before ( see post below) I decided it would be best if I eat something warm to help the tummy recover to almost 100% since we were gonna start skiing the next day. Can you imagine, up on the mountain, GOT NO TOILET LEH. IF NEED TO DIARRHOEA HOW?!

Very satisfying meal especially after being out in the cold, average price is 800yen. It's a small shop, so be prepared to wait ! We waited outside in the cold for 30 mins

Daimon Soba
9509 Toyosato Nozawaonsen-Mura, Nozawaonsen-mura, Shimotakai-gun, Nagano Prefecture 389-2502, Japan
Opens everyday: 11.30am-2.30pm, 5.30pm-8.30pm