Ramen Dojo in Hashihama, Imabari: Old-School Shoyu Ramen a Short Walk from the Island Ferry
Hashihama sits at the northern edge of Imabari, where small ferries leave for the islands under the Kurushima Kaikyo Bridge.
Cyclists pass through it on the way to the bridge, or spend twenty minutes there waiting for a boat.
Ramen Dojo is the plain, unfashionable ramen shop in that neighbourhood, and it has been there for decades.
It is about a four-minute walk from Hashihama Station, and roughly seventy metres from Matsu Seimenjo, the hand-cut udon shop locals queue for.
Why go
This is not a destination restaurant, and it would be dishonest to sell it as one.
It is what a small Japanese town actually eats on a working weekday, which is a different and rarer thing to find as a traveller.
Ramen abroad has mostly come to mean thick, rich, heavily built bowls, and Imabari has shops like that too.
Ramen Dojo serves the older kind, the clear and simple bowl that used to be ordinary everywhere in Japan and now is not.
The other reason is location.
If you are catching the local ferry to Oshima or Mashima, or riding out to the Kurushima Kaikyo Bridge, you pass within a few hundred metres of the door.
What the bowl is like
The description below comes from the Japanese original of this article, written after an earlier visit.
The shoyu (soy sauce) bowl arrives with bean sprouts and spring onion on top, in a clear broth that smells faintly of scallion oil.
The soup is light enough to see the bottom of the bowl through it.
The noodles are medium-thick and wavy, the kind that hold onto a thin broth without turning heavy.
The chashu pork is properly seasoned and keeps some chew, rather than dissolving the moment it reaches your mouth.
It is served in the old red-and-white patterned bowl that has largely disappeared from newer shops, on a red laminate counter.
Miso and shio (salt) are on the menu alongside shoyu, and the writer chose shoyu simply because it was a lunch break and he did not want to carry the smell of miso back to work.
The shop itself
The shop is one unit in Happy Plaza Hashihama, a low tenant building on the road toward the port.
That is worth knowing before you arrive, because you are not looking for a standalone restaurant with its own garden and lantern.
You are looking for an orange sign that reads Ramen Dojo above a row of shopfronts, with banners standing outside.
In the photograph above, those banners advertise miso ramen, shoyu ramen and hiyashi chuka, the chilled noodle dish Japanese shops put on in summer.
There are two bicycles parked directly in front of the door in that same photograph, which tells you what you need to know about arriving on one.
Inside there is a counter and a few small tables, twenty-five seats in total, and the room smells of dashi.
At the time of that visit the shop was already said to be around thirty years old, and to be run by the owner and his wife, so it has been going a good deal longer than that by now.
The oden pot, and summer noodles
There is a self-serve oden pot in the shop, and it is not a recent addition.
Oden is a pot of things simmered slowly in a light broth, and you take what you want on a skewer and pay for it with your meal.
It is an easy thing to order without any Japanese, because you can simply look into the pot and point.
The chilled noodles are a seasonal item rather than a fixture, and the banner in the photograph above suggests they have been part of summer here for a long time.
A recent visitor reported ordering a large hiyashi chuka along with oden from the pot, so both still appear to be running.
This is not “Imabari Ramen”
Imabari has a defined local ramen, made with a clear salt broth from small fish caught in the Kurushima Strait, and it is served at only three shops in town.
Ramen Dojo is not one of them, and its clear broth is a different thing that happens to look similar in a photograph.
If the regional speciality is what you came for, the three shops and how to find them are covered in our guide to Imabari Ramen.
If what you want is a straightforward bowl near the ferry, this is the closer and simpler answer.
Seventy metres to an udon shop
Matsu Seimenjo is the next property along, a standalone shop where they cut the Sanuki udon by hand and a queue forms at lunchtime.
Ramen Dojo is a tenant unit in the building beside it, which is why the two are so close and look nothing alike.
Between them you can decide on the day whether you want noodles in a hot clear soup or cold udon with a stronger bite, without moving your bicycle.
Matsu Seimenjo is written up in our article on the udon shop locals queue for, including how the self-service line works there.
The practical difference is timing, because the udon shop closes when the noodles run out and Ramen Dojo keeps going into the evening.
Getting there from JR Imabari Station
By train, take the JR Yosan Line from Imabari Station to Hashihama Station, which takes about five minutes and costs 240 yen.
From Hashihama Station it is roughly 250 metres on foot, about four minutes.
Trains on this stretch run at roughly hourly intervals, so check the timetable before you plan a meal around one.
By bicycle it is about 5.4 kilometres from the station, on flat roads through the north of the city, which is a comfortable twenty to twenty-five minutes.
There is a Setouchi Bus stop called Takabe on the Koura route about two minutes’ walk away, if you would rather not ride.
There is parking on site, since the shop sits in a shopping plaza, so a rental car or taxi is straightforward too.
If you have not yet sorted out a bicycle, renting one in Imabari explains where the rental counters are now that Sunrise Itoyama has closed.
A half day that ends here
The neighbourhood makes more sense as a morning than as a single stop.
Ride or take the train out to Hashihama in the morning, and walk the last kilometre from the shop to Hashihama Port.
From there the local ferry crosses to Oshima in about ten minutes, and the island is an uninhabited one with the ruins of a Meiji-era fortress on it.
The walking course there takes about two hours, which puts you back at the port in the early afternoon and hungry.
Ramen Dojo is open until eight in the evening from Tuesday to Sunday, so it absorbs a late lunch better than most shops in the area.
The boats, fares and timetable are set out in the guide to the local ferries from Hashihama Port, and the island itself in the article on Oshima and the Geiyo Fortress ruins.
Questions travellers ask
Do they take cards? No. Cash only, with no credit cards, no IC cards and no QR payment.
Is there an English menu? Not that we can confirm. The three main types are miso, shio and shoyu, and saying one of those words is enough to order.
How long does a meal take? Around twenty to thirty minutes, which fits between two ferry departures.
Can I leave my bicycle outside? Yes, bicycles are parked in front of the shop in the photograph above, and the plaza has a car park.
Is it open on Mondays? Yes, but only from 11:00 to 14:00, while the rest of the week runs to 20:00.
Is it a good bowl for a hot day? The broth is light rather than rich, and in summer there may be chilled noodles as well.
Practical information
Ramen Dojo, 11-28 Hashihama, Imabari, Ehime.
Telephone 0898-41-4707.
Open 11:00 to 14:00 on Mondays, and 11:00 to 20:00 from Tuesday to Sunday, with no regular closing day.
Twenty-five seats, thirteen of them at the counter, and parking on site.
Cash only.
Opening hours change, so it is worth confirming before a long ride out, and the hours above were checked against three listing sites while this article was being written.
Both photographs on this page were taken some years ago, so treat the banners and the room as a record of that day rather than a promise about this week, and note that we have deliberately not quoted prices for that reason.
More of the Hashihama area, the bridges and the rest of Imabari is collected in the Imabari guide for Shimanami Kaido cyclists.
Original article in Japanese: 『ラーメン道場』波止浜にある透き通った出汁が香るスープ♪｜今治ランチ隊が行く！
