Little Tokyo, Los Angeles

Nick and I went on a day trip to Little Tokyo in Los Angeles. Every time I go up to LA it rains. Thankfully though, it stopped raining in the afternoon. We walked around the area looking at shops and restaurants. We visited Misturu Cafe. The line going in to this little shop is out the door, but they have the best imagawayaki I've had. Imagawayaki is basically two pancake like circles on top of each other with azuki (red bean) paste in the middle. We got these freshly made and they were so delicious. Nice and hot, the outside of the dough is a little bit firm, the inside is nice and spongy. The red bean is sweet and high quality.

Imagawayaki

Azuki bean paste in the middle

We stopped by Orochon Ramen for lunch. I saw this place on Man vs. Food. I was trying to convince Nick to take the Special 2 Challenge. It's basically a big bowl of super spicy ramen you need to finish in 30 minutes, including drinking all the soup. Nick ended up with the salt Special 1 and I had the miso Orochon 2. We also had dumplings as an appetizer.

Menu

Little Dumplings

Miso Orochon 3

Salt Special 1

There's three soup bases you can choose from: miso, soy sauce, and salt. The menu says the ramen comes with pork but the slices were so small, they were barely noticeable which was pretty disappointing. I'd recommend getting the add-ins like chashu pork or egg. The portion of soup and noodles is huge and it is SUPER spicy. The Orochon 3 was enough spice for me and I love spicy food. Nick's spicy tolerance is pretty high and he admitted his ramen was really spicy too. Overall, I don't think this ramen is worth the price. But we went for the experience and just to check it out.

I heard there's a better ramen place, Daikokuya, just down the street. We'll probably visit this place next time.

Nick and I also went to the Japanese American National Museum. It's $5 for students with ID and $9 general admission. Silly Nick forgot his ID. They had an origami exhibit there, it was pretty cool, the most interesting thing was the locust installation. All the locust were made of dollar bills and were hanging from little strings from the ceiling.

Upstairs they have the internment camp exhibit. It was very education. The exhibit documents Japanese immigrants first arrival to the US on the West Coast and in Hawaii as sugar plantation workers. Then onward through WWII and the internment camps up to present day. It was sad to see all the blatant racism that was happening during those times. And our government was the one perpetrating all of this. It was all very educational and I learned a lot of things.

I like museums and it reminded me of when I was traveling in Europe, I went to more museums that month than practically my entire life.