The Great Ramen War · 麺道
Every ramen shop I've eaten at in Japan, mapped and ranked D to S, with a score for Zuzutto, the slurp factor.
What hooked me
Two bowls in Osaka. The Ramen War in Senba Shinsaibashi and Ramen EBI Pachi in Nippombashi were both S tier, and suddenly just remembering them wasn't enough. They needed ranking, mapping and a full record.
What I built
A map of my ramen journey through Japan. Every shop gets:
- a D–S tier seal, plus ratings for value, presentation and Zuzutto (ズズッと), the slurp factor
- the styles I tried, notes and photos
- its nearest station and walking time, filled in automatically from OpenStreetMap
- a place in the Journey timeline, which draws the route from bowl to bowl
Clicking a prefecture zooms to it. The Japan view keeps count of how many of the 47 prefectures I've conquered. The base map is drawn in the app's own ink palette, with English labels.
At home it runs as a self-hosted app with SQLite and photo uploads, and only I can edit it. The public version at ramen.jimhasadhd.fyi is a read-only static build on Cloudflare Workers.
What I learned
The pin should snap to the real shop. If a mapped ramen shop is within 40 m, it jumps there. It's a small thing, but it makes adding a bowl feel right.
47 prefectures. Every one of them needs checking. Purely for research.