If you love ramen and want to get paid for eating lots of it, I suggest visiting the Umakara Ramen Hyouri restaurant, in Tokyo, Japan. They will pay a cool 50,000 yen ($438) to anyone who finishes their giant bowl of delicious ramen in under 20 minutes, Easy money, right?

Well, they don’t call these things eating challenges for nothing, so it’s definitely not a walk in the park. In fact, in the three years since the Japanese restaurant introduced the challenge, only nine people have managed to finish the gargantuan dish in the allotted time. Legend has it that they didn’t eat for a week afterwards and never spoke the word “ramen” again. Nine is not that many, but at least it’s doable right? And here’s an extra incentive: if you think that 20 minutes is just not long enough to gobble this delicious monster, Umakara Ramen Hyouri is also willing to pay $236 to whoever manages to eat it all in 30 minutes.

Photo: MyNavi

However, while taking this epic eating challenge can put some serious money in your pocket, failing can cost you a bit of dough as well. Ramen fans have to pay 3,000 yen ($26) just to attempt the challenge, but in case your stomach can’t handle the massive quantity of food your pushing into it, and you end up throwing up, you also have to pay a 10,000 yen ($88) penalty. I guess you can consider that a clean-up fee, so I’d say it’s pretty fair.

But just to make sure you know what your’re getting into, here’s what’s in that giant bowl of ramen: four servings of ramen noodles, 8.8 pounds of bean sprouts, 24 ounces of broth, a whole lot of fried chicken, and some spicy chilli powder sprinkled on top. And if that doesn’t sound scary enough, these photos taken by MyNavi should give you a pretty good idea of how huge this dish is.

In case you’re more of a Pho soup kind of person, you should probably check out this epic eating challenge at the Pho Garden restaurant, in San Francisco.

via Kotaku