Ramen is not well known yet in the world. Of course, the noodle is famous in any parts of the world but probably noodle is more like a Chinese food than Japanese image. Actually Ramen is one of the noodles. It’s imported from China to Japan in the history and Japanese people arranged the taste and style into Japanese form. After that, it became NO.1 popular food among the Japanese. Sushi is also popular and famous in the world, but for us, Sushi is a little expensive. Ramen is more like average Japanese food for anybody any occasion in Japan.
If you visit Japan, it’s not difficult at all to find Ramen restaurants in Japan. Also recently the Ramen business is growing and many entrepreneurs try to hit a big business by creating new taste. That makes hard competition in Ramen business expecially in big cities in Japan.
However, if you visit Japan, maybe you should ask someone if he or she knows a good Ramen restaurant. Probably each person in Japan has 1 or 2 favourite Ramen restaurants in their mind.
As a note, taste differs very much if you choose pork base soup or fish base soup. Mainly soop is taken by pork’s bone and meet, so chosing pork soup is a wise choice for the first time. But pork base soup also has some variation. The best choice for pork base soup is Tokyo style ramen. Be careful, Kyushu style or Hakata style ramen has strong aroma of pork, so some don’t like it although many of Japanese like the strong aroma soup. For the first trial by foreigners, we reccommend Tokyo style. That’s safe choice.
Tokyo style ramen looks like above photo. Kyushu style or Hakata style ramen’s soup is close to white color.
Fish base soup also has fish aroma in the soup and some don’t like it. It’s gradually becoming popular especially in Tokyo area. But again, I think it’s a little risky choice for foreigners to choose it for the first trial.
In small cities of Japan, there often are historial ramen restaurants. They keep the same taste for a long time and have long time “commuting” customers. They repeatedly visit the restaurants and enjoy taste. That’s a kind of taste of the city. Not many cities have them. But some have them. If you travel into deep parts of Japan, you may be able to experience that taste.
