The Bowl Ahead

So far we have looked at ramen's history, its types, its numbers, its spread around the world and its relationship with health. In this final chapter, we sort out the "good" and the "bad" of ramen as a food and consider where this national dish is headed.

The Good, Part 1: A Fast, Tasty Meal Complete in One Bowl

Ramen's greatest appeal is that a whole meal is complete in a single bowl. Noodles as the staple, chashu and egg as the main dish, vegetables such as green onions and bean sprouts, and a hot broth. All of it lands in front of you within minutes of ordering. It is easy to walk in alone and quick to finish. Few meals fit the lives of busy working people so well.

That convenience goes even further with instant ramen. With just hot water, anyone can eat it anywhere. The fact that many households stock cup noodles for emergencies shows this strength (Chapter 3).

The Good, Part 2: Endless Variety

Ramen has no "correct form." Precisely because it lacks a fixed traditional template to uphold, as soba and sushi have, shop owners have been free to invent new bowls. It started with soy sauce, salt, miso and tonkotsu, and went on to tsukemen, iekei, Jiro-kei, mazesoba, tori paitan, tanrei-kei and vegan. Regional ramen alone accounts for 185 kinds in the list by the Japan Ramen Association and others (Chapter 4). New booms arise almost every year, and eaters can keep chasing "the next bowl."

This freedom has also made ramen "a place to take a chance." You can open a shop with relatively little capital, and with skill and ingenuity, become a shop with a line out the door. People who quit salaried jobs to open shops, people who went independent from the shops where they trained, people who opened shops overseas: for many, ramen has also been a business that could make a dream real.

The Good, Part 3: Local Pride and a Reason to Travel

Kitakata, Sapporo, Hakata, Wakayama. Regional ramen has the power to make a town's name known nationwide, and around the world. Plenty of people travel for ramen, and for locals, their town's ramen is the taste of home and a source of pride. Some towns, such as Yamagata City, are using their status as a "ramen town" in local development (Chapter 7).

And for foreigners visiting Japan, ramen has become "the taste of Japan," bound up with memories of their trip (Chapter 8). A dish born from Chinese noodles now draws people from around the world to Japan as one of the country's signature food cultures.

The Bad, Part 1: Salt and Overeating

On the other hand, ramen has clear weaknesses. The biggest is health. The salt in one bowl approaches the daily target; it is high in fat and carbohydrates and low in vegetables (Chapter 9). Because it is delicious, you want to drink every drop of broth, order a kaedama, and go back again and again. Ramen's very appeal makes it easy to overdo.

The Bad, Part 2: The Hardship of Those Who Make It

Ramen shop work is known to be physically grueling. Making tonkotsu broth means standing in front of a huge pot for hours from early morning. Add up prep, service and cleanup, and the working day tends to be long. Hauling heavy stockpots and boiling noodles nonstop in hot steam also takes a toll on backs and arms.

On top of that, the "1,000-yen wall" makes it hard to raise prices, so profits do not grow even as ingredient costs rise (Chapter 7). Long hours, but not the earnings to match. For these reasons, more than a few long-established independent shops close because no one can be found to take over. The disappearance of neighborhood chuka soba shops, long loved by locals, as their owners retire is a quiet challenge for the ramen industry.

The Bad, Part 3: Smells and Discarded Broth

Boiling pork bones for hours gives off a strong, distinctive smell. At shops near residential areas, this smell can lead to complaints from neighbors. Some shops install equipment to suppress odors or make their broth at a factory separate from the shop.

Another challenge is leftover broth. For your health, it is better to leave the broth. But leftover broth is thrown away, and the fat in it, if poured straight down the drain, can clog pipes and pollute rivers and the sea. Ramen shops treat it using grease traps that separate out the oil, but ramen faces a dilemma: "better to leave it for your health" versus "better not to leave it for the environment." Recently, some shops have begun thinking about portions people can finish comfortably, serving a little less broth or offering small-size menus.

Ramen in Stories

Ramen has appeared again and again in Japanese manga, anime, films and TV dramas. Supporting characters who are always slurping ramen, manga about a ramen shop owner's training and business, films set in ramen shops (Chapter 8). A character eating ramen at the counter is a stock scene in Japanese storytelling.

Through such works, ramen has become a food that evokes "Japan-ness" for people abroad as well. Many travelers visit Japan wanting to eat the ramen they saw in anime. Ramen is not only a food but also part of the stories that carry Japanese culture to the world.

The Changing Shape of the Shop

The shape of the ramen shop is changing little by little too. To cope with labor shortages, ticket machines, tablet ordering and cashless payment have become standard. Some shops leave boiling noodles or pouring broth to machines, and some have brought in cooking robots.

More popular shops have adopted numbered tickets or smartphone reservations to cut down on lines. Ways to enjoy a popular shop's flavor without going there are spreading too, such as mail-order frozen ramen and cup noodles that recreate a shop's taste. Who makes a bowl of ramen, where, how, and how it reaches the eater: the answers keep changing with the times.

Eating Comfortably at a Ramen Shop

Finally, here are a few small courtesies for eating comfortably at a ramen shop. None of them are fixed rules, but they are considerate gestures appreciated at many shops. How to use the ticket machine, how to order, and how to eat kaedama and tsukemen are covered in detail in our guide "How to Eat Ramen."

• Buy your meal ticket first. At shops with a ticket machine, buy a ticket as soon as you enter and hand it to the staff at your seat.
• Don't linger when there is a line. At popular shops, it is considered good manners to leave your seat soon after you finish.
• Keep photos to a minimum. When you take pictures, keep other customers and staff out of the shot, and eat before the noodles go soggy. Some shops do not allow photography.
• Put your bowl on the counter when you finish. At shops with counter seating, returning the bowl to the raised counter makes it easier for staff to clear (depending on the shop).
• Say "gochisosama." Just a word of thanks across the counter lets the people who made your bowl know how you feel.

The Bowl Ahead

More than 500 years have passed since "keitaimen," considered an ancestor of Chinese-style noodles, was recorded at a Zen temple in the Muromachi period. From the noodle soup of Meiji port towns to Rairaiken in Asakusa, street stalls in the ruins, a research shed in a backyard, and on to the world's great cities, ramen has kept changing its shape to fit the lives of the people of each era and each town.

Ramen will surely keep changing. Ways to keep it delicious while holding down salt, shops where the people who make it can work without overstraining themselves, systems that reduce the burden on the environment, and new bowls suited to the eating habits and religions of people around the world. There are many challenges, but ramen has always overcome such walls with new ideas.

The next time you eat ramen, take a look inside the bowl. The color of the broth, the shape of the noodles, the toppings on top: each one holds more than a century of human ingenuity and stories that crossed the sea.