After our five weeks in Seoul concluded in early June we took a week’s holiday in Japan before returning to Minnesota. On our previous (and first) visit to the country last summer, we’d divided our time between Tokyo and Kyoto. We had fond memories of both great cities but less fond memories of the heat and humidity. And so for this trip we’d decided to go to a part of Japan where the weather is a lot more pleasant in the summer: Hokkaido. There are a number of airlines that fly from Seoul to Sapporo and thankfully the flight is not very long and prices are quite reasonable. Accordingly, we flew from Seoul to Sapporo. We stayed in Sapporo for a couple of days before heading north to Otaru, where we rented a car. We then drove around the western part of the island for a few days before ending up in Hakodate in the southwest, where we returned the car and stayed a few more days before returning to Tokyo to catch our flight back to Minnesota. It was a wonderful week—and yes, the weather was as advertised. Of course, we ate a lot of good food; it’s kind of hard to not eat very well in Japan. This began just minutes after arrival at Sapporo’s New Chitose airport.
Our flight arrived at an inconvenient hour, right around 1 pm. This is inconvenient because it’s about 40 minutes from New Chitose airport to Sapporo by train and between immigration and baggage claim and figuring out the train tickets, it didn’t seem likely that we’d be able to get to Sapporo before 2.30 at the earliest. We’d then have to drop our luggage off at the hotel before heading out for lunch. This would mean a very late lunch and then a late dinner and we weren’t sure how much energy we’d have to stay up for that. Luckily, it turns out that the food options at New Chitose airport itself are quite extensive. You just have to get to Gourmet World on the third floor of the domestic side of the terminal. This is a large food court which includes within it a section called Ramen Dojyo/Dojo. A number of Sapporo’s highly-regarded ramen establishments have branches here. Our first lesson in the summer of 2025 had been that airport branches of restaurants in Japan are not to be looked down on and so we decided to just eat lunch at the airport itself before heading to town.
Ramen Dojyo turned out to be a pretty hectic location. Rather than explore it fully with our baggage in tow, we decided to just eat at the first of the ramen outlets: Ebisoba Ichigen. Of course, it helped that a quick consult of Tabelog confirmed that they have a strong reputation. There was a long queue but they have a lot of counter seating and ramen lines move quickly (you place your order as you approach the front). And we were indeed seated in less than 20 minutes (having left our luggage near the entrance of Ramen Dojyo). This was because we were willing to be split into pairs for seating. As it happened, seats opened up next to each other in the few minutes it took for our ramen to arrive and we ended up four abreast anyway.
The menu is simple: their specialty is shrimp broth (hence the ebi in their name). This comes in two soup bases that can each be got in one of three ways. The two bases are either the “Shrimp-Original” or “Shrimp-Rich” broths. The former is made entirely from shrimp heads; the latter is combined with pork broth for more oomph. Having decided on your base you then have to choose between three types of tare/seasoning: the Shrimp-Shio/Salt, Shrimp-Shoyu/Soy and Shrimp-Miso. These are your ramen options at the airport; I believe that at the regular locations you can specify “Moderate” in addition to “Rich” for the pork broth blend and also choose the noodle thickness for the ramen itself. There were a few other things on the menu as well but we did not bother with them.
What did we get? The younger boy got the Shrimp-Miso-Original; the older boy got the Shrimp-Miso-Rich; the missus got the Shrimp-Shio-Original; and I got the Shrimp-Shoyu-Rich. I don’t have very much more to say about this except that all the bowls were very good indeed. There were also some condiments on the counter for adding more flavour (shrimp oil, crushed garlic, chilli powder, pepper) but the broths were so flavourful there was no real need for any of them. Given the long queue outside—and given our need to catch the 2.20 train to Sapporo—we did not linger. We had paid (they accept credit cards) and were on our way within 20 minutes of sitting down.
For a look at the restaurant and our bowls of ramen, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.
This was only the first of several ramen meals over the course of the week. We ate ramen again the next day in Sapporo and then a few more times elsewhere in Hokkaido. I don’t think any of us had this in our top three ramen meals on the trip but it was a very good start anyway.
Alright, I’ll have a booze review up in a few hours. On Tuesday, I hope to put up my review of my dinner at Masque in Bombay in April. On Wednesday (or maybe Thursday) I’ll have a Twin Cities report involving Chinese food. Later in the week there will be more from Seoul and Hokkaido.