{"id":3249,"date":"2025-12-01T18:00:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T01:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=3249"},"modified":"2025-12-01T18:00:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T01:00:14","slug":"tokyos-ueno-station-has-an-unmanned-noodle-restaurant-on-its-platform-and-its-no-joke-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=3249","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo\u2019s Ueno Station has an unmanned noodle restaurant on its platform, and its no-joke good"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

A reason to make sure to walk all the way to the end of the platform<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Having somewhere you need to go and being hungry aren\u2019t mutually exclusive conditions, and so many of Japan\u2019s train stations have places to grab a bite to eat inside the ticket gates. Among the most common station restaurant types are soba noodle stands<\/strong>, sometimes located right on the platform<\/strong> and run by a short-order cook who can whip up a bowl for you to quickly scarf down before hopping on your train. For example, if you\u2019re at Ueno Station<\/strong> in Tokyo<\/strong>, you\u2019ll find the soba stand Sotei in the middle of the Joban Line platform, between tracks 11 and 12<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But since Ueno is one of Tokyo\u2019s busiest stations, with roughly half a million users on any given day, Sotei isn\u2019t its only restaurant, nor is it the station\u2019s only soba shop. As a matter of fact, it\u2019s not even the only soba joint on the Joban Line platform, because if you keep walking all the way to the end of the platform, there\u2019s another<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of unusual for two different restaurants that specialize in the same kind of food to share a platform like this, but that\u2019s not the only unique aspect to this arrangement, as indicated by the second soba restaurant\u2019s name, Self Eki Soba<\/strong>, meaning \u201cSelf Station Soba.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u25bc \u201cSelf Eki Soba\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cSelf\u201d often gets used in Japanese in the sense of \u201cdo it yourself\u201d or \u201cself serve,\u201d and sure enough, when we stepped inside we saw that there\u2019s no cooking or service staff here, just a bunch of counters and a terminal with a screen in the corner<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But while there\u2019s no one at Self Eki Soba to cook your noodles for you, you don\u2019t have to cook them yourself either, because that terminal is actually a soba cooking \/vending machine<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Self Eki Soba is open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays, 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Saturdays, and 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Sundays and holidays. Those closing times are actually kind of flexible, though, since it closes early if is sells out of noodles, which it already had on the weeknight we discovered it at about 9 p.m. We took this as a sign that the noodles must taste pretty good, if Self Eki Soba has enough customers to sell out two hours before closing, and so we came back on a later day in the afternoon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Three kinds of noodles are on offer, a basic tanuki soba<\/strong> (buckwheat noodles with tempura flakes) for 600 yen (US$4), soba with pork<\/strong> for 780 yen, and a tonkotsu gyokai blended pork\/fish-stock ramen<\/strong> for 980 yen.<\/p>\n

\u25bc The pork soba<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You place your order via the terminal\u2019s touchscreen, which has an optional English-language setting<\/strong> that you can switch to, and you can even tap for more information about nutritional content and allergens for each dish.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Payment is by cashless means only, either a prepaid e-money card like the Suica rail pass or credit card.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We decided to order the soba with pork, and the screen kept us updated on its cooking progress.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After a short wait, our noodles were ready to be retrieved from the opening on the right side of the machine<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Below the slot where you get your food is another compartment from which you can grab chopsticks and, if you want, a spoon<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Removing the cover from our bowl, we saw our noodles, strips of pork, and diced green onion floating in the soba broth.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On the one hand, for something machine-made, this doesn\u2019t look half-bad, but it\u2019s not aesthetically on par with something you\u2019d get served by an actual dedicated ramen chef. Still, the most important thing is how it tastes, and it actually tastes really good<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The broth was rich with a gentle sweetness to it, and the noodles and pork had soaked up plenty of its delicious flavor. The noodles had a proper buckwheat flavor to them too, something that\u2019s not always present in cheaper versions of soba.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Adding an elegant touch to the flavor profile was the presence of yuzu kosho<\/strong>, a spicy paste made with yuzu citrus fruit and chili, which had been mixed into the broth. This also isn\u2019t something you\u2019d expect to find at a humble station platform soba joint, but it added an enticing accent to every sip of the broth.<\/p>\n

Oh, and the restaurant\u2019s interior was nice and clean too, through a combination of either cleaning staff coming in periodically and\/or customers being polite enough to not make a mess of the place.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Because of its location at the end of the platform, it\u2019s easy to miss Self Eki Soba, especially since Ueno Station has so many lines running through it that you often don\u2019t have a clear line of sight from other parts of the building either because of trains blocking your view. Now that we know it\u2019s there, though, we might find ourselves on the Joban platform more often, even if we\u2019re headed somewhere on another line.<\/p>\n

Photos \u00a9SoraNews24<\/em>
\n\u25cf Want to hear about SoraNews24\u2019s latest articles as soon as they\u2019re published? Follow us on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reason to make sure to walk all the way to the end of the platform. Having somewhere you need to go and being hungry aren\u2019t mutually exclusive conditions, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}