From our other sites
The story
A Yahoo News article reporting that stand-and-eat soba stalls on train station platforms are quietly disappearing has stirred discussion on 5ch’s News Speed+ board. These stalls once epitomized the Showa-era scene of commuters wolfing down noodles while keeping an ear out for the departure bell, and the article traces the reasons behind their decline. On the thread, posters mourned beloved shops that have closed — Rokumon Soba, Menjo Ippuku in Minami-Urawa, and the fried-chicken soba stand in Abiko among them — while others recalled how “I used to eat there all the time when a bowl of plain soba was 200 yen, but I stopped going once it passed 300 yen,” pointing to price hikes as a direct driver of the drop in customers. Some also noted that station kiosk culture as a whole, including KIOSK stores, is shrinking.
Published 9/16 (Wed) 6:00 AM
PinsBu NEWS
The smell of rich soy-sauce broth drifting from a corner of the station platform. Wolfing down piping-hot soba in one go while keeping an eye on the departure bell — a scene once familiar to salarymen on their commute. Now, that platform stand-and-eat soba culture is quietly fading away.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
"Wait, she eats soba too…?" — that kind of surprise.
Which "huge idol" are we talking about?
Golden Half?
Sounds like something a pampered rich kid would whine about — "ugh, typical countryside."
Idols back then worked under brutally exploitative ("black company") conditions, so stand-and-eat soba was probably all they had time to eat.
I also liked the soba in Maibara, but at some point they just stopped selling it.
Wait, that soba with the giant fried chicken is gone?
That's the first place I think of when someone says "stand-and-eat soba."
Sorry about that 🙏
The stand-and-eat soba on the platform of the ○○ Line at Ueno Station — that's the real soba, passed down among ordinary people.
And I can't stand people who talk big like that while eating in the most uncouth way possible lol
For a second I misread that as the restroom on the ○○ Line platform at Ueno Station lol
Such nostalgia.
It was right at the corner before the ticket gates, wasn't it.
Hako Soba has been terrible for a long time now.
You think the place people nicknamed "Flavor Disaster Teahouse" was good? What kind of taste buds do you have?
Places like Rokumon Soba, you know.
Are kiosks even still a thing?
Haven't seen one in years…
Once it passed 300 yen, I stopped.
That's really all there is to it.
Tempura-and-egg soba runs about 380 yen now, I'd guess.
Honestly the railways themselves are already a dying format — nothing but breakdowns and accidents, on the verge of vanishing.
Then how do you explain rush hour?
Newbies — including Re: #1 — shouldn't be talking about stand-and-eat soba.
Someone who worships a gimmick like korokke soba and acts like a soba connoisseur shouldn't be lecturing anyone about soba.
Pile on some tenkasu (fried tempura scraps) and eat two pieces of inari sushi with it, and it'd still only run you 300 yen.
Man, those were the days.
You'd say "crack an egg in!" and hand over 50 yen, and the old lady would take the coin and crack the egg with that same hand lol
Guys who ordered it with inari on the side were the regulars, and they looked so cool to me.
If a smoking room actually charged enough to turn a profit, even heavy smokers wouldn't bother going in.
The kind of place where one try is enough and you're done with it.
And honestly, it's not that different from instant cup noodles.
The flavor varies a ton from shop to shop.
Lumping them all together just makes you look clueless.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Platform stand-and-eat soba stalls grew out of a business model dating back to the Japanese National Railways era, meeting commuters’ need to eat quickly in the limited space of a station platform, and — including chains affiliated with various private railway companies — they were part of the everyday commuting scenery of the Showa era. In recent years, rising costs for wheat, cooking oil, and labor have pushed the price of a basic bowl of plain soba from the 200-yen range into the 300s, and as one thread comment put it, “I stopped eating there once it passed 300 yen” — this is a business where that psychological price barrier tends to translate directly into fewer customers. Competition from convenience stores and in-station cafés and quick-service shops, along with the ongoing trend toward unstaffed, streamlined stations, is also likely a factor, though it should be noted that the article itself doesn’t provide detailed figures on these points. Some posts on the thread touched on differences between Kanto- and Kansai-style broth, but comments that flatly declared one superior to the other have been left out here, since they amount to little more than mudslinging. Reports of long-established shops closing vary by region and by time period, so individual store closures shouldn’t be mistaken for a nationwide trend.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “So that’s why they’re vanishing from platforms… “Stand-and-eat soba” on the brink of extinction — the reasons behind the fading of this wistful Showa-era relic.”
Leave a Reply