WHAT IS THE SUPLEKS DATABASE?
The Supleks Ramen Database is generally held to be the largest-scale, most comprehensive ramen-related web site in Japan. The site holds a huge database of Japan ramen shops organized by location and type. It permits registered users to post comments, rankings and pictures on the site for the shops that they visit - the site then stores the rankings and allows users to sort and search through the list of shops using their locations and rankings as a guide. The site is well-integrated with Google Maps and you can easily see what shops are in each area, how close they are to the nearest train station, etc.
As of this writing, in the Supleks database, there are 19731 shops throughout Japan, 5730 of which are in Tokyo. We have no idea where the word “Supleks” comes from or what it means. Yes we know there’s a word “suplex” used in wrestling but we don’t see what that has to do with ramen, but hey this is Japan so who knows.
Admittedly,
Ramen Tokyo will never ever even approach the scale or depth of Supleks. So this page is a basic attempt to explain to non-Japanese speakers how to use some of the features of Supleks, so that you can also use it by yourself to find new shops and enjoy ramen in Tokyo.
After reading this page and playing with Supleks a bit, you should be able to use Supleks to answer the following questions:
- What are all the ramen shops in a particular area (“area” = prefecture, ward, city or named neighborhood, pretty much any location you can find on Google Maps Japan, e.g. Dogenzaka 2-chome or 道玄坂２丁目)? (see the section RAMEN SHOPS IN A PARTICULAR AREA)
- What are the highest-ranked (by Supleks contributors) ramen shops right now? (see the section HIGHEST RANKED RAMEN SHOPS)
- What were the best shops by year (for the last 3 years), or month (for the last 24 months)? (see the section HIGHEST RANKED RAMEN SHOPS IN THE PAST)
- What are the best shops by soup broth type or noodle type? (see the sections RAMEN SHOPS BY NOODLE TYPE and RAMEN SHOPS BY SOUP BROTH TYPE)
- I’m at such and such a particular place (e.g. Hotel XYZ, Station ABC, or some other place that I can find on Google Maps) – what are the best/closest ramen shops near me? (see the section WHAT RAMEN SHOPS ARE CLOSE TO ME RIGHT NOW)
- What is the ranking of a particular shop that I have read about on
http://www.ramentokyo.com?
- What are the main areas for good ramen in Tokyo? By good we mean not any one shop in particular but an area that is largely walkable and has a relatively large number of high-ranked shops.
Notes/Disclaimers:
- Questions, corrections and suggestions for this guide are welcome at:
however we cannot promise a reply, speedy or otherwise.
- You will need to know a tiny bit about Japanese addressing, meaning prefectures, wards, neighborhoods, and how street addresses are formed in writing. We’ll try to handhold as much as we can on this doc. If you want to search the database directly by area (prefecture, ward, city or named neighborhood) you will need to know how to write that area’s name in Japanese (you will need to know the exact kanji or hiragana, “close” isn’t good enough). If you don’t know how or want to do that then you will still be able to use this guide, as long as you can find your location on Google Maps.
- If you want to enter Japanese addresses directly into Supleks, We recommend you test the characters out in Google Maps Japan first to verify that they are correct and take you where you want to go. While you will need the Japanese fonts on your PC, you won’t necessarily also need the Japanese IME (I’m assuming you are using a Windows PC, We don’t know what the procedures are for Linux/Unix, Mac or other operating systems), if you can find the Japanese characters elsewhere on the Internet and use the Windows Copy (highlight them, then right-click, Copy) function to copy them.
- If you want to write the characters yourself then of course you will need the ability to enter Japanese Kanji characters on your computer. I am not familar with the process of doing this for Macs, however for Windows PCs, searching in Google for “Windows Japanese IME installation” or similar phrases should lead you to an explanation of what the IME is for Windows and the installation instructions. There is no cost for the IME, it comes with Windows, but you may need your Windows installation disk. We cannot help with the installation or support of the IME. If you use Linux then you probably already know what to do. Copying and pasting the Japanese characters from another site on the web, e.g. Wikipedia, should work fine in 99% of the cases, if you have the fonts installed.
- The following common sets of Japanese characters will come in handy:
Tokyo = 東京
Shinjuku = 新宿
Shibuya = 渋谷
Shinagawa = 品川
Akihabara = 秋葉原
Ikebukero = 池袋
Takadanobaba = 高田馬場
ramen = らーめん or ラーメン
- A general familiarity with Google Maps Japan is very helpful.
- Any necessary Japanese characters other than the above we will put into this page.
- Although in general we find Supleks to be a very good guide, we don’t vouch for any particular recommendation that they make.
GETTING STARTED
Use this URL to get to Supleks:
http://ramendb.supleks.jp/search. This link should be the one that you bookmark. It will take you to the Main Search Page of Supleks, which looks like this (all picture links in this document should expand larger if you click on them, I recommend you do right-click "Open In New Window"):
Once you are on the Main Search Page, you will see the following three important sections (they are highlighted above in red - all other items on this page can be ignored):
the Button Bar (the right side of the brown bar that goes across the top of the screen)
the Search Field
the Search Results
The brown Button Bar that takes you to different locations on the site is in the upper right – it has only three buttons that you need to know about:
SEARCH – takes you back to this Main Search Page
RAMEN MAP – takes you to the Google Maps-based Ramen Map page (described later)
RANKING – takes you to the page where you can put in parameters like soup type, type of ramen, or period of time (in the past) and generate lists of what shops are/were the leaders.
SHOP LISTING RESULTS PAGE
Whenever you search for ramen shops by one category or another, you will always end up at the Shop Listing Results Screen, which usually looks like this:
Regardless of how you get to this page, this list contains shop names, the wards “ku 区” or cities “shi 市” that they are in, and their scores (ranked by readers who submit reviews) under the “Point” column (ポイント). If you click on the name of the one of the shops, in this case the one on top “Chuuka Soba Tomita” (中華蕎麦 とみ田):
then it will take you to the specific page for that shop, with all of the details. Now see the next section to read how to interpret that page.
SHOP DETAILS PAGE
This page shows the detailed information that is stored in Supleks for a single ramen shop. The basic “how to get there” information is at the top left, the scores are on the top right (out of 100), and then the reviews are on the bottom, extending over multiple pages if necessary:
So obviousuly most people reading this page on Ramen Tokyo will not be able to read any of this Japanese Ramen Shop page. But note the following:
1 – you can print out this page and give a taxi driver the address (if you are within reasonable taxi distance) or show it to the concierge at your hotel and they can tell you how to get there and call to verify the hours for you
2 – for the shop hours, many shops have breaks in the middle of the day (although in this case above, the 16:30-17:00 頃多し means that the shop is crowded at that time - when there is in fact an afternoon break, the shop hours will be listed in two parts, and the time between them is the PM break
3 – for the vacation day, many shops are closed one or occasionally two days of the week, in addition to holidays – this line shows you what day or days (日曜日 = Sunday, 月 = Monday, 火 = Tuesday, 水 = Wednesday, 木 = Thursday, 金 = Friday, 土 = Saturday, 祝 = Public Holiday)
4 - the map pane is a real Google Maps map and you can click on the Google logo to expand it, but that will take you away from the Supleks site
RAMEN SHOPS IN A PARTICULAR AREA
From the Main Search Page, here are the three useful things you can do, using examples:
1) If you only know the general location in Tokyo that you are in, such as the ward or city, then you can select Tokyo from the first pulldown in the Search Field:
however just clicking Search
after that will return large numbers of results. So after you select Tokyo, then another pulldown will appear to the right of it like this: where you can now select the ward "ku 区" or city "shi 市", an example using Shibuya-ku is here:
Clicking Search now will give you a listing of all ramen shops in Shibuya-ku, ordered by ranking. There will still be a lot, in this example 200-300.
2) If you know the more specific area that you want to search in, e.g. Shibuya-ku, Yoyogi (渋谷区代々木), and can type in or copy the Japanese characters for it or can recognize it from a menu, you can use the Search Field. Select the city and ward as per the above, then type or copy the characters for the subneighborhood into the long white rectangular Search Field: and then press the Search button on the right:
This will give you a listing of all shops in Yoyogi (in Shibuya-ku), in this case there are 24 of them.
3) If you know the Japanese name of a particular shop that you want to search for, and you can type the characters with the IME or copy them from someplace else on the Internet, you can enter the characters for it directly into the Search Field, without having to do anything else, and then click Search:
In this case we have typed in the characters for Rokurinsha, a popular shop in Oosaki, Shinagawa-ku. Now when you click Search this time, a number of shops may still display, because the comments and descriptions for some other shops may reference this shop’s name, and the Search function appears to search in all information (addresses, comments, descriptions, etc.). But the shop you are looking for should be at or near the top of the list, if your Japanese characters were correct.
After you get a list of shops via the above procedure, refer to the SHOP LISTING RESULTS PAGE above.
HIGHEST RANKED RAMEN SHOPS RIGHT NOW
In order to see the highest ranked ramen shops right now, click the Ranking “ランキング” button in the upper right on the brown bar. This button is on every page so you don’t have to return to the Main Search Page first. Then you will end up here:
The listing contains the highest-ranked shops in the country. Typically you will want to filter on some city or prefecture, so use the picker at the top, the one with 全国 in it (= “nationwide”) to perform Step 1 in the RAMEN SHOPS IN A PARTICULAR AREA section above in order to filter on location. After you get a list of shops via the above procedure, refer to the section SHOP LISTING RESULTS PAGE.
HIGHEST RANKED RAMEN SHOPS IN THE PAST
In order to see the highest ranked ramen shops in the past, first click the Ranking “ランキング” button in the upper right on the brown bar, to take you back to the base Ranking page. Then click on the appropriate button or pull-down on the right according to the below – the values in the pull-downs should be self-explanatory when you see them.
The listing contains the highest-ranked shops in the country. Typically you will want to filter on some city or prefecture, so use the picker at the top, the one with 全国 in it (= “nationwide”) to perform Step 1 in the RAMEN SHOPS IN A PARTICULAR AREA section above in order to filter on location. After you get a list of shops via the above procedure, refer to SHOP LISTING RESULTS PAGE.
RAMEN SHOPS BY NOODLE TYPE
In order to filter on noodle type (see below), first click the Ranking “ランキング” button in the upper right on the brown bar, to take you back to the base Ranking page. Then click on the appropriate button or pull-down on the right according to the below – the values in the pull-downs are translated below.
While there are more and better definitions on the
Ramen Tokyo Ramen Glossary page, a brief synopsis is as follows (note that “flavors” of broth are in the next section):
ramen – noodles in hot broth, typically with some toppings
tsukemen – noodles and broth served separately, frequently without toppings
abura soba/shiru nashi – noodles in oily sauce, sometimes with some toppings
Typically you will want to filter on some city or prefecture, so use the picker at the top, the one with 全国 in it (= “nationwide”) to perform Step 1 in the RAMEN SHOPS IN A PARTICULAR AREA section above in order to filter on location. After you get a list of shops via the above procedure, refer to SHOP LISTING RESULTS PAGE.
RAMEN SHOPS BY SOUP BROTH TYPE
In order to filter on soup broth type (see below), first click the Ranking “ランキング” button in the upper right on the brown bar, to take you back to the base Ranking page. Then click on the appropriate button or pull-down on the right according to the below – the values in the pull-downs are translated below:
More and better definitions of the above are on the
Ramen Tokyo Ramen Glossary page. I recommend that you also make sure that the broth type you are interested in does not have any items in it that you do not eat (dietary, religious reasons etc.). For example, sometimes miso ramen broth can be made with miso paste and chicken broth, therefore it might not be appropriate for some types of vegetarians.
Typically you will want to filter on some city or prefecture, so use the picker at the top, the one with 全国 in it (= “nationwide”) to perform Step 1 in the RAMEN SHOPS IN A PARTICULAR AREA section above in order to filter on location. After you get a list of shops via the above procedure, refer to SHOP LISTING RESULTS PAGE.
WHAT RAMEN SHOPS ARE CLOSE TO ME RIGHT NOW
One of the best features of the Supleks site is its integration with Google Maps. In order to bring up the Google Maps feature within Supleks, click on the “Ramen Map” link (ラーメンマップ) on the brown bar. This will take you to the following screen:
This screen works like the regular Google Maps page and you can use it to find ramen shops. Scroll, zoom in and zoom out, it all works the same way. Each gold star represents one shop. You can left-click on any star to bring up a quick balloon containing information such as the shop name and address. In the balloon, click on the shop name to go back to that shop’s DETAILS PAGE. (I recommend that you actually right-click on the shop name to open the page in a new window, that way you can keep the main map window open as you scout a particular area). Sometimes you will need to zoom in and scroll around a bit to get your bearings.
Use the picker on the top right to sort the shops on the list below (lower right) by proximity to the map center or by point ranking. Once you sort by point ranking (ラーメンポイント), the top shop on the list below is the best-ranked one on the map. So center the map on your hotel, or the station you are at, and then use the point ranking list to see what’s best or closest.
Ganbatte kudasai!
(go for it!)
ramen 
in English 
24 by 7
