the ramen blog & other goodies!

An elderly woman in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, became ill after eating a Nissin Cup Noodle. After an examination, paradichlorobenzene, which is used in mothballs and insect repellent, was found in the soup. The specific Cup Noodle was traced back to a factory in Ibaraki Prefecture and was manufactured on August 30 of this year. Nissin President Susumu Nakagawa announced that his firm will voluntarily recall about 500,000 Cup Noodles that were produced on the same date.

(By the way, for anyone who’s wondering, Cup Noodles are known as Cup Noodle (singular) in Japan.)

via Japan Today with thanks to Cutie for the tip.

In case you missed the previous ramen festival in February, Mitsuwa japanese supermarket is having a Hokkaido Fair, featuring two of the previously featured ramenyas and apparently introducing highly rated Santouka Ramen to the San Jose Store.

Shoyu ramen specialist Asameshi Maeda Honpo will be at the Costa Mesa store from Thursday thru Sunday (9/11 to 9/14) and the New Jersey store next week from Thursday thru Sunday (9/18 to 9/21).

Sumire Ramen will be offering their Miso ramen and Miso Butter Corn ramen at the Torrance store Thursday thru Sunday (9/11 to 9/14), and the Chicago store next Thursday thru Sunday (9/18 to 9/21).

And last, but certainly not least, shio ramen fans can try Santouka ramen at the San Jose store next Thursday thru Sunday (9/18 to 9/21).

Remember to go early, as they tend to sell out of ramen early!

Chikin Ramen (and yes, that is the correct “Japanese” spelling) went on sale today, 50 years ago, in 1958. Chikin Ramen was the brainchild of Momofuku Ando, inventor of instant ramen and founder of Nissin Foods (maker of Cup Noodles). A moment of inspiration struck when Ando-san watched people lining up to buy black-market ramen during food shortages after World War II and he set out to create a food that would be easily accessible to everyone. After months of development, he sucessfully created and marketed Chikin Ramen, the world’s first “instant ramen.” Momofuku Ando, who passed away at the ripe old age of 96 last year in January, believed that “Peace will come to the world when the people have enough to eat.” Mr. Ando claimed to have eaten Chikin Ramen almost every day.

It’s been over two years since we reported on the Ramen Girl, a movie about an American woman (Brittany Murphy) stranded in Japan, who ends up learning how to make ramen. Even though it’s starting to look like the movie might go straight to dvd, this new trailer doesn’t look half bad, thanks to Toshiyuki Nishida. What do you think?

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Food manufacturer Kinrei teamed up with Japan’s Sunday Mainichi Weekly magazine to research and produce Hakodate Flavor Salt Ramen, a packaged cold ramen reflective of ramen in the Hakodate region in Hokkaido. The Hakodate ramen uses local ingredients such as water from Hokkaido and salt from nearby Okhotsk Sea. The magazine wrote about the entire process in this week’s issue. (more…)

So we all know what a big bowl of ramen looks like. What about a microscopic bowl? An engineering professor and his students at the University of Tokyo have created the world’s smallest bowl of ramen, complete with (unedible) “noodles” that are only 1/12,5000th of an inch long and 1/1.25 millionth of an inch thick. Compare that with a human hair, which is on average, only 4/1000th of an inch thick.

The ramen bowl was created “for fun” using carbon nanotubes, which are microscopic tube shaped pieces of carbon. No word on what kind of soup base was used, and unfortunately, it doesn’t come with any toppings or chashu. As soon as we come across a nice microscopic plate of gyoza to go along with the ramen, you’ll be the first to know!

Thanks to tamade38 for the heads up!