The restaurant and drink recommendations in this post are... not great. I do agree that you want to aim for places that don't cater to tourists, but it's honestly pretty easy to give specific recommendations if you're into food and/or drinking.
In the past 5 or so years, the craft beer and craft gin scenes have been really blowing up. I highly recommend seeking those while you're here.
For ramen it's totally acceptable to go to the popular places. I'd actually generally avoid the advice from the post. You probably don't want to go to the places that cater to salarymen, because they're looking for a cheap place that's open late. Avoid places like ippudo and ichiran, but for the most part, if it has a crazy amount of reviews on google maps or tabelog, and isn't a chain, it's probably really good.
Otherwise I really like extensively trying izakayas. There's so much variety, from cheap salaryman places, to expensive spots that cater to foodies. Some specialize in sashimi, others yakitori, and lots of izakayas seem to take the jack of all trades approach. The hardest part of the izakayas is that they tend to have their menus on the walls, on wooden or paper signs for each dish, making it pretty difficult if you can't read japanese.
I have a pretty extensive list for Tokyo: https://wanderlog.com/view/mhwjfphqda/tokyo-guide/shared
In the past 5 or so years, the craft beer and craft gin scenes have been really blowing up. I highly recommend seeking those while you're here.
For ramen it's totally acceptable to go to the popular places. I'd actually generally avoid the advice from the post. You probably don't want to go to the places that cater to salarymen, because they're looking for a cheap place that's open late. Avoid places like ippudo and ichiran, but for the most part, if it has a crazy amount of reviews on google maps or tabelog, and isn't a chain, it's probably really good.
Otherwise I really like extensively trying izakayas. There's so much variety, from cheap salaryman places, to expensive spots that cater to foodies. Some specialize in sashimi, others yakitori, and lots of izakayas seem to take the jack of all trades approach. The hardest part of the izakayas is that they tend to have their menus on the walls, on wooden or paper signs for each dish, making it pretty difficult if you can't read japanese.