Ikspiari (TDR's Downtown Disney), Maihama, Japan

I had a chance to visit Ikspiari this weekend, which is the Tokyo Disney Resort’s answer to the Downtown Disneys at the Disney World Resort and the Disneyland Resort.  Ikspiari definitely has the Disney feel (although, like the rest of TDR, it is owned and operated by another company via a license from Disney) with its themed shopping areas and music.  Ikspiari features some shops/restaurants familiar to Americans such as Gap, Godiva, Starbucks, Rainforest Café and T.G.I.Fridays, and of course, has many Japanese stores such as Shinseido music, Monsoon Café and Lupica Tea.  Like its Downtown Disney brethren, Ikspiari has a multi-theater cinema.  Here are some Ikspiari pictures for your perusal. 

For our lunch, we decided to dine at the food court at Ikspirari, which features about nine restaurants, and you can eat everything in the food court from Italian to British pub to Japanese fare.  Here is a sampling of the restaurants’ food:

We went for udon and ramen.  Here are some pictures of the ramen shop as a well as one of the food court itself.  

Our group ordered plain udon with tempura chikuwa, tempura pumpkin and inari from the udon restaurant, and tonkotsu and shio ramen from the ramen shop.  As you can see from this picture, we greedily wolfed down our food. 

Our lunch totaled about 3,000 yen which is about 35 dollars U.S., not bad compared to the rest of the restaurants at Ikspiari.  Rainforest Café is particularly expensive here in Japan.  To be honest, the food was nothing too spectacular, and the speed we ate was mostly due to us being really hungry.  I personally find udon rather consistent from place to place, having a clean flavor and light broth.  My ramen, the tonkotsu ramen, was particularly garlicky and a little too salty.  The ramen noodles had a chow mein quality to them and I prefer thicker noodles.  As a result, I give our noodles three slurps out of five slurps.  

One note, like most food courts in Japan, there is limited seating space at Ikspiari's food court.  Accordingly, since lunch and dinner at Ikspiari’s food court are quite busy, it is best to eat a little before or after the meal rush.