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As the 20th century drew to a close, Fuji Research Institute Corp., a private think tank, asked 2,000 men and women in the greater Tokyo area to name the three Japanese products they considered worthy of being called the outstanding Japanese inventions of the century. Instant ramen topped the list for 692 people-one of every three respondents. Next came karaoke, followed by the Walkman headphone stereo.
The Japanese fondness for ramen is not confined to instant noodles. The Japanese are just as fond of "real" chef-made ramen, served at specialty restaurants throughout Japan from Hokkaido to Okinawa.
Viewer ratings are invariably high when "TV Champion," a popular TV quiz show, features self-proclaimed masters of ramen trivia who can tell exactly how one local ramen differs from another. There is even a ramen museum in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo. According to the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications, there were 61,727 Chinese restaurants-where ramen is an indispensable item on the menu-around the nation in 1999. They outnumbered the 34,526 establishments that serve traditional Japanese soba (buckwheat noodles) and udon (thick noodles made of wheat flour). The mass media never tire of introducing popular ramen places where waiting customers form long queues.
Noodle dishes originated in China 1,500 to 2,000 years ago and eventually were brought to Japan, where they evolved over the centuries until they became ramen as we know it today. And it was after World War II that the invention of "instant ramen" made ramen a global food. Today, the word itself has become part of the English language. Webster's New World College Dictionary (Fourth Edition) defines ramen as "Japanese noodles of wheat flour, usually served in broth with pieces of vegetables and meat." Whether instant or made from scratch, ramen has become a national dish of Japan.
Surprisingly, for all their predisposition to regulate everything, Japan's food administrators have not yet set industrial standards for the thickness or ingredients of ramen noodles, or "Chinese-style noodles" in bureaucratese. The most obvious difference between these noodles and their Japanese cousins-udon and soba-is that ramen noodles are yellowish, while udon is white and soba is grayish. A typical bowl of ramen unites these noodles in a hot broth made with stewing chicken...