Japan sees rise of ‘ramen girls’

24 comments

1. Hi all! I’m Emma Ockerman, an audience engagement staffer at Nikkei Asia. I was previously posting in this sub under a personal account.

   I thought your community might find this article interesting. It was one of our best-read pieces over the weekend. Here’s an excerpt:

   ​

   >TOKYO — Ramen, Japan’s ubiquitous noodle soup, has become one of the country’s most internationally recognized dishes. In Japan, though, ramen is a dish with largely masculine connotations — traditionally it is men who get misty-eyed about their favorite ramen restaurants, not women. Now that is changing as a new culture of “girl ramen” takes hold.
   >
   >Since the 1960s, when ramen served as a cog in the engine of Japan’s period of rapid economic growth, ramen has been a largely male prerogative, a source of private joy and the entrance to a man’s inner sanctum. Most men enter ramen establishments alone, sit at the counter and talk to no one. Socializing or soaking up the ambience is never the point.
   >
   >One of the global trends of 2023 was the rise of “girl dinner” following a TikTok post by Olivia Maher that popularized a visually pleasing, personalized snack plate in which the main ingredients were bread and cheese, thrown together to avoid the labor of cooking. But girl dinner is really following in the wake of girl ramen, which has been trending since 2015, when the first Ramen Girls Festival was launched in Yokohama.
   >
   >The event was staged by Satoko Morimoto, who shot to media fame by blogging about her love for ramen and the admission that she tucks into 600 bowls a year. Morimoto urged young Japanese women to brave the best ramen restaurants, stand tall among the predominantly male clientele crowding the entrance, and unleash their inner ramen obsessions when they finally faced their dreamboat bowls of hot soup and noodles.
   >
   >At the Ramen Girls Festival, chefs of both genders served up tantalizingly delicious bowls to female ramen lovers — and to men who dared to step through the pinkly decorated entrance of this outdoor event. The RGF was annexed to the annual Ramen Expo event during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are strong indications that the festival will be revived as a separate event in 2024.

   The full story can be read [here.](https://asia.nikkei.com/Life-Arts/Life/Japan-sees-rise-of-ramen-girls)

2. I’ve once waited in line for 2 hours in Tokyo for ramen not that long ago. Yeah, it wasn’t worth it but I noticed that 99% of the people in line were males. This was at the original location of ramen jiro, a wildly popular ramen restaurant chain with a cult following

3. I don’t get it….it’s JUST soup…..soup I tell you.

4. When I was in Tokyo, most of the women I saw eating ramen were tourists. I did see one Japanese girl eating ramen and she looked a little ashamed.

5. I’ve definitely noticed an uptick in solo women diners at some of the ramen shops near me since COVID.

6. Can anyone explain how ramen noodles became so male associated in Japan in the first place?

7. “And then in 2021 Nissin took Light Plus off store shelves and replaced it with Cup Noodle Pro, a gluten- and sugar-slashed product that was perfect for woke, gym-going urban professionals of both genders.”

   gluten free is “woke” gg

   edit: the article wording was changed

8. this has never even crossed my mind. i eat ramen regularly.. even it being fatty has never crossed my mind as i only eat shrimp and vegetables in mine. weird.

9. I feel like there’s still a long road ahead. My fiancée really likes ramen, and she often buy cup noodles to eat at home. We sometimes go and eat ramen outside together, but she would never go alone even if you paid her to do so. Because ramen restaurants are usually filled with middle age Japanese men, and you would stand out a little bit too much going there alone as a woman.

   I’ve tried telling her that she doesn’t have to care about the gazes and just go and enjoy ramen when she wants to, but “don’t stand out” is an integral part of Japanese culture, it’s not something they can overcome that easily.

   I would be overjoyed to see this part of Japanese society change but I have yet to witness anything of the sort myself, living in Osaka.

10. >What sets girl ramen apart from traditional male-oriented ramen? First, ramen establishments need to understand and cater to feminine needs, **such as airy and hygienic interiors, clean restrooms**, **wooden countertops and jazz on the speakers**.

    Hygienic interiors, clean restrooms, wooden countertops and jazz music is somehow feminine?

    >The soup should be lighter on the digestive system than the traditional kind, and there should be a **gluten-free option** for the noodles.

    Ugh, not the gluten-free bandwagon.

    >**The meat and vegetables should be sourced from organic farms**

    Really? That’s a feminine need?

    >and portions need to be smaller than is traditional to **help women avoid over-eating**.

    You don’t have to finish the entire thing… but that also stinks of misogyny.

    >Above all, female customers need to feel welcome.

    Totally.

    >In the traditional ramen culture men could be as loudly slurpy as they wished, but women had to live by different rules. In some ways, a woman alone at a ramen counter stood out more than a woman alone at a bar, by exposing her slurping self for the world to see. Unless she was accompanied by a boyfriend or spouse, solo ramen-eating meant taking a major social risk.

    I guess this is exclusively a Japanese thing.

    >”Ramen eating can be socially damaging,” says Tokyo office worker Miyako Kuzushiro, who is a ramen lover but not keen on publicizing the fact. “You should never eat ramen on a first date or even the third. You first have to know that that your date will not judge you for loving ramen and will still want to continue the relationship afterwards.”

    Just weird.

    >If this sounds like more stress than culinary pleasure for women, that is because for decades every aspect of ramen was geared to men, from the **soup stock — usually consisting of lard, pig innards and a dollop of MSG**

    I know plenty of women who would die for this.

    >The soup tended to be extra hot because Japanese men liked it that way,

    Not exclusively a “man” thing.

    >and the steam rising from the bowls wreaked havoc on women’s facial makeup.

    What? Don’t eat yakiniku or shabu-shabu then.

    >**posters of bikini-clad girls adorned the walls, and worn-out nude magazines** often peeked out from newspaper racks. There were no napkins, and usually only one dark and cramped restroom.

    Yeah, getting rid of that is cool. But that’s not like… every ramen shop? Also, is this 1980s?

    **I can’t tell if this article was written seriously or as satire.**

11. The wife loves ramen just as much as I do, maybe more. She is very area centric and believes that kyushu ramen is best ramen.

12. Most girls in the west are “ramen girls” lol

13. “ramen establishments need to understand and cater to feminine needs, such as airy and hygienic interiors, clean restrooms”

    the bare minimum 🗿🗿🗿

14. All of my japanese girlfriends loved ramen more than me and introduced me to some fantastic places. My current one can’t get enough of jiro ramen, which is the greasiest, saltiest ramen. Love it.

15. I don’t understand why food is so gendered in Japan. Sweets stores, bakeries, or cafes its all women and you won’t see any men. You look at places like ramen donburi or yakitori it’s all men and you won’t see any women. It’s odd to me that certain types of native food only one gender eats and how each gender has their own foods.

16. I don’t know. I’ve seen plenty of petite women slurp down a bowl no problem.

17. Not one mention of *Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles*? Aww.

18. Thank god we’ve solved this one.

19. I Worked as a prep cook at a Yakitori restaurant in NYC (it was higher end and run by a well known Japanese chef) for a bit and they had ochazuke. Whenever a customer ordered it the server would say if the customer was a man or a women. If they were a man then we’d have to plate it in a larger bowl with a larger portion and if they were a women then in a smaller bow/smaller portion. I never found out if there was a cost difference, but it pissed me off nonetheless.

    Same thing at a restaurant near the language school I went to here in Japan. If you ordered the lunch set, the portion of food would be larger/smaller depending on if you were a man or woman. Same price though.

20. Haha this reminds me of the time we came out of comiket after a day of shopping so we were starving and beelined for a curry place. We’re chomping away at our serving and gradually realized there was only guys in the restaurant. Cue us looking at a cafe across and there was only girls.

    But who cares the curry was amazing and we went across to the cafe for dessert after

21. I like ramen well enough, but waiting in line for hours? No. Its supposed to be the Asian equivalent of fast food. And ultimately what makes ramen good is the broth which is made up mostly of water. So as long as you are using Tokyo tap water, im gonna pass. I heard some ramen places have to import their water to make sure its good quality.

22. Asian noodle places usually have at least 3 different portion size, I’m talking about Pho (Vietnamese) or Chinese noodle places. Japanese ramen typically do only have one size so I guess it’s a new thing for them? Also I don’t get why people are talking about noodles being greasy, fatty and unhealthy, it’s actually a very healthy meal; there’s decent carbs, good protein and rich nutritious broth

23. >Posters of bikini-clad girls adorned the walls, and worn-out nude magazines often peeked out from newspaper racks. There were no napkins, and usually only one dark and cramped restroom.

    *”Ya ain’t thinking about getting rid of the dank, are ya, Moe?”*

    This was rather surprising to read. Granted, my ramen fill-ups in Japan were few and far between, and mostly at little wholesome mom & pop establishments in small towns. But even in Tokyo, it seems I was able to avoid dives like the author describes and still get my weekly bowl of tonkotsu/miso mixed broth with pork belly and an onsen egg.

    Well, weekly to once every two weeks. Because the author called it, that stuff was so rich it handed me my ass every time. I’ve never finished a bowl, but the salarymen go in there and demolish it, then get their order of extra noodles. I don’t know how they get anything done after lunch.

24. Is this supposed to be journalism? Reads like one of those embarrassing UnseenJapan cringefests.