Sokusekisai Oyama, aka Japan’s Instant Ramen King, has made a lucrative career out of eating instant noodles at least once a day for over three decades.

Instant noodles, better known as cup noodles in Japan, are a big deal in the land of the rising sun. There are literally hundreds of different types, from the cheap variants you can find at your local grocery store to gourmet versions with actual toppings like dehydrated meat and vegetables. They are by far the most popular instant meal in Japan and virtually everyone loves them, but no one loves them as much as Sokusekisai Oyama, the man known as the ‘Instant Ramen King’. A former illustrator with a degree in engineering, Oyama gave up his career to dedicate himself to what he loved most – eating noodles and becoming a professional cup noodle critic. The 65-year-old man claims he has eaten at least one serving of instant noodles and a total of over 10,000 cups of noodles over the lainst 30 years.

  Read More »

Boost Noodle is a new type of Japanese instant ramen designed to be consumed with one hand by simply sucking the contents out of a small pouch.

Instant ramen is probably the most convenient food money can buy, but one Japanese company has found a way to make it even easier to eat. Nippon Ham recently launched Boost Noodle, a type of hearty pork ramen designed for gamers who want to curb their hunger without having to take a break from what they love most. Boost Noodle ramen comes in a convenient plastic pouch and can be consumed with one hand, by simply sucking out the contents. Boost Noodle consists of a special type of yam noodles, chashu pork, menma (fermented bamboo shoots), and a mix of pork stock and seafood broths. Each pack of Boost Noodle also contains 35 milligrams of caffeine.

Read More »

A Taipei-based restaurant has been getting a lot of attention for its newest addition to the menu- a ramen dish topped with a steamed 14-legged isopod that looks like something out of an Alien movie.

The Ramen Boy restaurant recently took to Facebook to announce its latest dish, a bowl of ramen featuring a generous helping of giant isopod (Bathynomus giganteus), which it describes as a “dream ingredient”. Called “Giant isopod with creamy chicken broth ramen”, the dish consists of a large bowl of ramen and a large isopod steamed in its own shell. To prepare the deep-sea crustacean, the cooks remove the stomach viscera, keeping the creamy glands for consumption, and steam it. The white meat is said to taste like lobster and crab, while the yellow glands are “unexpectedly sweet”.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

In his quest to discover the perfect instant noodle, Japanese ramen lover Toshio Yamamoto has tasted over 5,600 varieties from 40 countries, in the past two decades. He reviews every kind ramen he tries on his website and scores them on a scale of 1 to 5. The best rating he’s given out so far is a ‘4’.

On i-ramen.net, 55-year-old Yamamoto offers detailed information on each of the 5,600 varieties of noodles he’s tasted, including the country of origin, cooking time, sodium content, calories, texture, and flavor. The website is hugely popular with thousands of fans around the world, and has recorded over 1.4 million hits since 1996. Some of his fans even send him packages of noodles from overseas.

“When you finish eating the noodles, the content will be gone even though the packaging remains,” Yamamoto explained. “I want to keep records of the content.” He also produces video reviews of instant noodles that he puts up on YouTube – they’ve gotten millions of hits as well. And his book, titled ‘Sokuseki Mencyclopedia’, features info on packets of instant noodles from around the world.

Read More »