Pre-holiday FUK day 2: ramen and shopping

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Hello Kitty and I desperately needed to catch up on sleep, so we decided to sleep in today.  After eventually dragging our butts out of bed, we made our way to the original shop (本店) of Hakata Ramen ShinShin (博多らーめん ShinShin) in Tenjin (天神).

I first learned about this place at the GohGanDen pop-up in Macau last year.  The crab curry finale featured noodles from ShinShin, and I was really impressed with the texture of those thin strands.  It seemed natural that we should check this place out while we were in town.

There was already a fairly long line across the street when we arrived, and for two people who normally refuse to line up for food beyond, say, 15 minutes or so, we ended up enduring a nearly 40-minute wait.

Ramen with cooked egg (煮玉子入りらーめん) - the most popular choice.  With an egg, some char siu (チャーシュー), spring onions, and wood ear.  The fatty pork belly was really delicious, as there were some smoky and charred flavors.  The soup was tasty yet light.

What I really loved, though, were the noodles themselves.  These were more like somen (素麺) or angel hair rather than your typical Hakata-style ramen.　These are supplied by Kawabe Shokuhin (川部食品).

Hello Kitty ordered up a bowl of chanpon (ちゃんぽん), which she had been missing dearly.  The stir-fried topping included some clams and seafood in addition to all the ham, cabbage, and bean sprouts.  There was also a good amount of charring to make it really tasty.

We also had some gyoza (餃子).  These were OK.

Having satisfied our hunger, we made our way to Hakata Station for a train journey south.  Hello Kitty wanted to do some shopping at an outlet, so we made our way to Tosu Premium Outlets (鳥栖プレミアム∙アウトレット).

This place looked like a classic Californian outlet mall, and featured a good range of brands from Adidas to Banana Republic to Dolce and Gabbana.  While we hadn't budgeted space in our luggage for this kind of shopping, we ended up picking up a few things at very reasonable prices.

A couple of hours went by quickly, and we had to make our way back to Fukuoka to rejoin the others for dinner...