Last year’s People’s Choice awards for the best ramen in Japan reveals visitors to the land of the Rising Sun look in all the wrong places for the country’s top-rated ramen. Not only that, but according to travel experts, ramen-loving tourists don’t even visit during the right season for noodles.
The noodle-rich culinary scene in Japan is consistently listed as a top reason why tourists visit. However, many of these tourists want their trips to coincide with the mystical late-spring beauty of cherry blossoms or the equally short autumn window when a kaleidoscope of changing leaves transforms Japan.
While these seasons both provide stunning backdrops to Japan’s bustling beauty, if you’re on the lookout for Japan’s top ramen, you need to visit during the winter months. The quiet stillness of Japan’s off-season for tourism is when menus come alive with variations of these hearty broth soups.
Winter Travel Makes for Perfect Noodle Weather
As long as you avoid the New Year’s festivities, travel during the winter means having famous temples, shrines, and gardens all to yourself. Best of all, cooler temperatures allow for unabashed sampling at Japan’s other famous institutions: ramen houses. Japan’s renowned noodles and humble ramen reign supreme.
Ramen for the Uninitiated
For those unfamiliar with ramen, this noodle soup consists of wheat noodles, flavorful broth, and a near-limitless range of toppings. While each region has its signature ramen style, the typical ramen is a bouillon- and meat-centric meal topped with a perfectly cooked egg.
Ramen recipes tend to adhere to decades of tradition. The ramen restaurant’s atmosphere reflects the quintessential Japanese quest for harmonious flavors blended with uncluttered simplicity. As you watch steaming noodles prepared right before your eyes, they take on a magical quality. Many of these much-loved ramen houses safeguard their secret recipes.
It is no surprise many tourists flocking to Japan each year list “eating out” as one of their top reasons for traveling, with ramen featured heavily on their list of dishes to enjoy.
More than 24,000 restaurants across Japan serve ramen, with many enjoying a cult-like following. This once-simple dish is becoming increasingly complex as top chefs vie for the perfect combination of flavors. Some ramen restaurants in Japan even hold coveted Michelin star ratings. Many other ramen restaurants rack up mentions of their own in the much-respected Michelin Food Guide.
Ramen even has its own specific serving dish. Japanese people have long dictated that ramen-worthy bowls must be of a particular size and shape, with kilns across the country handcrafting spectacular vessels to honor their esteemed noodle dish.
Many restaurants, even smaller mom-and-pop ones, splurge on stunning handcrafted rustic ramen bowls to showcase their particular culinary creations. Meanwhile, ramen lovers also frequent the famous kilns of Japan, scouring them for their favorite traditional ramen dish designs. Some hand-painted works of art feature such iconic scenes as the “white wave whale” or the outline of the esteemed Mt. Fuji.
An Odyssey of Ramen
Like most noodle dishes, ramen restaurants serve their soup piping hot. Japan’s hot and humid late spring to fall temperatures do not encourage ramen sampling — at least not a ramen odyssey where foodies sample ramen with reckless abandon. Hence, ramen aficionados favor the cooler months to slurp up noodles.
While visiting a top-ranked restaurant may still feature on your ramen tour of Japan, the locals also have an extensive list of lesser-known spots you may also want to check out. Locals overwhelmingly prefer the hidden inner-city gems and undiscovered, further-afield ramen restaurants over the tourist-heavy Michelin-picked spots.
Armed with their lists of top picks for ramen, serious noodle crusaders often plan extensive ramen pilgrimages, wandering the fog-drenched trails of Japan’s off-the-beaten-path locales in search of that perfect ramen. Hidden temples and ancient shrines become markers for such noodle odysseys.
Places such as Wakayama boast ramen enthusiasts who visit in such numbers that the local tourism board created a ramen map for pilgrims to follow. Seek out such spots in the cooler winter months to find less competition in the queue for noodle bliss and soul-satisfying rewards for ramen enthusiasts.
