Choose Your Chashu

Hello fellow Ibarakians!
I talked about returning to a ramen place last week, but this week, I will be talking about a new ramen place I visited earlier this month.
Whenever I go to Kenkyugakuen in Tsukuba, the first place I visit is Costco. Why? The gasoline is super cheap, I love the bubbly water they sell, and I can get some grocery shopping done while I’m there. By the way, Costco has mini cinnamon donuts and a new ham pizza on the menu!
Anyway, after finishing my Costco trip, I usually head straight home. However, one Tuesday night, Mrs. Ibaraki Eats and I were hungry, so we decided to grab some ramen nearby. I fired up the old Google search engine and found a ramen shop very close to Kenkyugakuen Station.
And that, fellow Ibarakians, is how we found ourselves standing in front of Kigenmon Kenkyugakuen Shop!

Kigenmon Kenkyugakuen Shop

As I mentioned before, Kigenmon is located in the Kenkyugakuen area of Tsukuba City, just a short walk from Kenkyugakuen Station. If you decide to drive there, like we did, unfortunately, the ramen shop does not have its own parking lot. You will have to park in one of the many paid parking lots around the station. Even though you have to pay for parking, this actually turns out to be a perk, which I will explain later in the post.
When we arrived at Kigenmon, we walked past a huge bar called Resonance and found the ramen shop bustling with customers. We walked inside, where we were greeted by the staff and the shop's ticket vending machine.

The Menu

The menu is displayed on a ticket vending machine and is entirely in Japanese. There is also a paper menu next to the machine that provides some descriptions of the ramen, but unfortunately, that is only in Japanese as well. The shop serves mainly ramen and tsukemen.
The buttons along the top of the machine are labeled Nagoya Chochin (I have no idea what that is, but I’m guessing it refers to Nagoya-style ramen), Shinku Soba (Shinku means “vacuum,” although it can also refer to an empty space, so I’m still not sure what that means in this context), Shinku Tsukemen, and Premium Tsukemen.
The other red buttons offer different types of Nagoya Chochin Ramen, mainly soy sauce-based varieties. The blue buttons also feature different types of Nagoya Chochin Ramen, but these are mainly salt-based varieties. The black and orange buttons are for the different types of Shinku Soba and Tsukemen. Finally, the buttons along the bottom are mainly for side dishes, extra ramen toppings, and drinks.
Mrs. Ibaraki Eats and I were in the mood for tsukemen, so that is what we ordered. We sat down, and the staff came up to ask and asked us an interesting question.

Choose Your Chashu

My wife and I were in the mood for tsukemen, so we both ordered a bowl. What surprised us was when a staff member handed us a chashu menu. That's right, we got to choose our own chashu!
The staff member also asked to see our parking ticket from the paid parking lot across the street. After checking it, he thanked us and explained that we had two options: we could either ask for an omori (a larger serving of noodles) or choose two different types of chashu for our ramen. The ramen shop can't validate, so instead they give you these two awesome options.
We both decided to go with the two-chashu option. The chashu menu offered five choices: low-temperature-cooked chashu, char-grilled chashu, fire-grilled chashu, roasted chashu, and soft-roasted chashu.

Shinku Tsukemen

The first bowl of tsukemen to arrive at our table was my wife's Shinku Tsukemen. She chose low-temperature-cooked chashu and char-grilled chashu. Her soup looked really thick, and the noodles were thick and shiny. She couldn't wait to start slurping.
She grabbed some noodles, dipped them into the soup, and tried her tsukemen. She shook her head in approval before letting me have a taste.
The first thing to hit my taste buds was the warm, thick soup. I'm not entirely sure what it was made with. It wasn't pork, I think, but it might have been chicken. All I can tell you is that it warmed me up and tasted delicious! The noodles had a great chewy texture and soaked up the soup nicely.
All in all, not a bad bowl of tsukemen.

Premium Tsukemen

Finally, it was my turn! My Premium Tsukemen had arrived. I ordered the fire-grilled chashu and roasted chashu for my bowl, and my Premium Tsukemen looked fantastic.
It had basically the same noodles as Mrs. Ibaraki Eats' tsukemen, but there was something different about mine. My noodles were kombusui tsukemen dipping noodles. I've talked about this style of tsukemen before, where the noodles are chilled in kombu (kelp) water.
The soup was shoyu-based and had huge chunks of negi (Japanese green onion) floating in it. I decided to try the noodles by themselves first and picked up a light flavor of kombu. Not a bad start.
I then dipped my noodles into the shoyu soup, slurped them up, and found myself in tsukemen heaven. I'm usually not a huge fan of shoyu ramen or tsukemen, but this bowl blew me away. The soup wasn't as salty or oily as I expected, which was a pleasant surprise.
Another thing that surprised me was the ajitama (seasoned egg). It was so soft, with a rich yolk that practically dripped out of it. It went perfectly with the shoyu soup.
The two types of chashu I ordered were also incredible. The fire-grilled chashu had a nice, soft, meaty texture, while the roasted chashu was a little tougher but still paired very well with the noodles.
My Premium Tsukemen was fantastic, and Mrs. Ibaraki Eats agreed after giving it a try.
I will say, though, that the soup started to lose some of its magic as it cooled down. Thankfully, the bowl also came with several different seasonings that completely changed the flavor of my tsukemen. Of all the seasonings, I would say the yuzu slices were the best. Their refreshing citrus flavor went perfectly with my kombusui noodles!

After we finished our tsukemen, it was time to head home. We thanked the staff for serving us such an amazing bowl of tsukemen and made our way back to Tsuchiura.
Our experience at Kigenmon was both delicious and interesting! I love the fact that you can choose your own chashu and experiment with different types to see which ones work best with your tsukemen or ramen. It's a fun way to customize your meal and discover new combinations.

So if you are in the mood for tsukemen and love chashu and are in the Kenkyugakuen area of Tsukuba, why not give Kigenmon a chance? Who knows? You might see us there. Trying out different chashu with our bowl of Tsukemen.
Enjoy!

For more information on Kigenmon Kenkyugakuen Shop, check out their X account:
https://x.com/kigenmon_kenkyu

For the older blog posts, check out the WIX Ibaraki Eats.

https://regaladom24.wixsite.com/website