Bustling Ameyoko Shopping Street Has A Little Bit Of Everything
What is the Ameyoko Shopping Street?
Ameyoko Shopping Street in the Ueno district includes more than 400 stores selling all manner of goods. You can find seafood, clothing, bags, cosmetics, dried food, sweets. You name it, you can probably find it on this bustling street. There’s A LOT of stores, shops, and restaurants crammed into this area. Prices are fairly cheap as well.
Ameyoko is located right next to Ueno Park and Ueno Station which makes for a great place to stop by before or after a day in the park to grab some food. There’s a TON of places to eat around the area, so you’ll definitely be able to find something to munch on!
Himuro Ueno Ramen
I didn’t even know Ameyoko existed. I went to Ueno with the intent on going to the park and hitting up the museums. I did want to grab some food prior to heading over though and quickly saw throngs of people located near the entrance to Ameyoko and decided to walk around a bit.
One of the restaurants that caught my eye in the area was Himuro Ueno Ramen. It’s not on one of the main streets, it’s located on one of the many side streets. Having a hankering for some ramen on this particular day I decided to give it a try.
It’s one of those ramen restaurants where you order at a machine and receive a ticket to give to the chef. They can be a little intimidating if there’s no English and a line behind you. Fortunately, although there was no English, they did do something else to help us Non-Japanese speaking folk.
There were taped numbers on the machine that correlated with the numbers of the ramen photos in the front of the restaurant. So I just had to match the number. I didn’t know what anything else on the menu was but was happy to be able to get what looked like a delicious bowl of ramen.
It’s a small restaurant with limited seating, much like many of the ramen places I visited. I really enjoy these types of places. Very homely with great ambience. You get a good look at how the ramen is made which is great.
The Kimuchi Ramen Medium Spicy
I ended up getting the Kimuchi Ramen Medium Spicy (980 yen, $6.68). The ramen came out piping hot about ten minutes or so after I handed them the ticket.
It came with 1 piece of pork chashu, bamboo shoots, kimchi, seaweed, bean sprouts, and green onion. Lots of goodies were in it! The broth had a nice rich flavor to it and was fairly spicy. Not sure what the base was but it was quite tasty.
The chashu was very thin and lean. It wasn’t heavily salted or seasoned but tasted great.
The noodles were thicker and curly. Defintely al dente with a nice bounce to them and they tasted very fresh as well.
There’s a good number of textures within this bowl of ramen. From the chewiness of the noodles to the crunch from the bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, kimchi and seaweed. They all delivered a different type of crunch with each bite, which is always a nice!
Overall this was a hearty bowl of ramen with a lot of goodies in it. I love kimchi so having that included in it was really nice and added to the overall flavor of the ramen broth.
Himuro Ramen
Address: 4 Chome-5-2 Ueno, Taito City, Tokyo 110-0005, Japan
Hours:
| Wednesday | 11 AM–3:30 AM |
| Thursday | 11 AM–3:30 AM |
| Friday(The Emperor’s Birthday) | 11 AM–3:30 AMHours might differ |
| Saturday | 11 AM–3:30 AM |
| Sunday | 11 AM–2 AM |
| Monday | 11 AM–3:30 AM |
| Tuesday | 11 AM–3:30 AM |
Oedo-Sho Sushi
After spending the entire day in Ueno Park I decided to cap the day off with some sushi near Ameyoko Street. I stumbled upon Oedo-Sho which is a conveyer belt sushi restaurant. It’s a cheap, affordable place to enjoy some sushi. Conveyer belt sushi is defintely an experience that should be tried while in Japan. There’s conveyer belt sushi places throughout the world, but this sushi quality and selection is likely to be far superior. There’s just a ton of different cuts of fish here.
The menu is quite large with a ton of different types of sushi. The options on the actual conveyer belt seemed to be fairly minimal though. You can order directly from the chefs to get sushi from the menu that isn’t going around the conveyer belt it seemed. I just wasn’t sure how to do that exactly. With minimal English speakers working on this particular night I just stuck with what was going around.
The Sushi
The sushi that I did know and recognize included were pretty much salmon, fatty salmon, shrimp. I ate a few others as well, what kind of fish they were, I have no idea.
Overall, the sushi was pretty decent. For my whole meal it was only (2070 yen, $14.10 USD) It wasn’t top tier but you get what you pay for and it was pretty good to boot.
Service options: Cash-only · Doesn’t accept reservations
Address: 6 Chome-12-14 Ueno, Taito City, Tokyo 110-0005, Japan
Hours:
| Friday(The Emperor’s Birthday) | 11:30 AM–10 PMHours might differ |
| Saturday | 11:30 AM–10 PM |
| Sunday | 11:30 AM–10 PM |
| Monday | 11:30 AM–10 PM |
| Tuesday | 11:30 AM–10 PM |
| Wednesday | 11:30 AM–10 PM |
| Thursday | 11:30 AM–10 PM |
