Ramen in Japan

Ramen in Japan

Ramen is Chinese soup style pasta.

But this column takes Japanese ramens.

In these days, I see a lot of Chinese tourist making line to popular ramen restaurant in Tokyo almost everyday.

Although there is not so different between traditional Chinese ramen and Japanese styled ramen, Japanese ramen shop owner are extremely strict to own styles…

Some owners are making soup taking more than 3 days or more, others are closing shop a day only by being not able to make satisfied soup.

(By the way, when I went in China, Chinese ramens are also delicious.)

Japanese ramen takes egg and sliced pork. some shops takes also naruto (this is minced fish roef. yep, the manga’s naruto is from ramen ingredients.) and red sliced ginger. these are Japanese only.

(Ramen egg is boiled half-raw egg. I think very tasty, recommend it.)

Ramen types

Differences of Ramen soup and Ramen ingredients

Japanese ramens have four broth taste styles. shouyu(soy sauce), shio(salt), miso, and tonkotsu(soup from pork born).

Especialy, miso is popular in Hokkaido island(north island),  tonkotsu is famous for Kyushu island(Souther west island).

Tonkotsu ramen has special ingredients which are spicy green vegitables and red gingers.

Shouyu taste are most old and common in Japanese ramen. Old ramen shop are almost all shouyu style.

The ingredients are normally meat slices, egg, sea weed, and naruto(the famous anime naruto is named after it. Naruto is fish block with pink circle mark(like anime naruto’s head gear mark) ).

In 20c, the mainstream was shoyu ramen. but in 21century, Tonkotsu ramen is boom more than others.

Oh, and in Okinawa island(South in Japan) has Okinawa-soba. this is categorized in soba, but I think it is more closely ramen than soba. it’s also tasty, and supposedly healthy than other ramens.

Ramen restaurant in Japan

These four or five styled ramens are all able to eat in Tokyo or Osaka, almost everywhere in Japan nowadays.

For your infomation, if you prefer taste of…

rich                                                         thin

Then you go, tonkotsu > miso >  shio > shouyu > okinawan style

And, Ippudo ramen chain and Ichiran chain which are liked by foreign tourists are both tonkotsu style.

If you go these shops, probably you can’t eat the other tastes ramen. If you want to try many styles, these two is short of it.

There are from individual ramen shop to other many ramen chains in Japan. From every year from some media, the best ramen is presented. Most of them are individual ramen restaurant.

Please try it many ramen 🙂

Thank you.