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The story
A thread on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board asking “What do you think is Japan’s best regional ramen?” blew up with activity. Posters rallied behind hometown favorites and travel memories alike — Kurume ramen, Tokushima ramen, Kitakata ramen, Wakayama ramen, Nagaoka’s ginger-soy ramen, Okinawa soba, and more. Opinions split sharply in the pork-bone (tonkotsu) camp, with some insisting “Kurume is the true mainstream” and others countering that “Hakata and Nagahama have more umami.” The way raw egg gets added to Tokushima ramen, and the regional quirk of ramen shops also serving sushi or oden, were also hot topics.
What people said
Not Hakata, not Nagahama — Kurume.
Even if a ramen shop that sickly-sweet were in my neighborhood, I could only handle going once a season.
Even saying "Tokushima ramen" in one breath doesn't capture how varied it is.
Nationwide, people only know that brown egg-topped version, but there are tons of other varieties within the prefecture too —
like Naruto's Sanpachi or Komatsushima's Okamoto Chuka.
They really should be marketing it harder nationally as a ramen powerhouse.
What's so great about it?
If it's Nagoya, Kourai-style places are better.
Don't try to pit it against Sugakiya. That place is less about the taste and more a hangout spot for grandmas and grandpas.
Ramen Fuku is hard to give up too.
Onomichi ramen and Aomori's niboshi (dried-sardine broth) ramen rank higher for me.
Uh, the noodles ARE the main point of Kitakata ramen.
No way, Onomichi ramen is dead last among regional ramens.
I'm saying this as a former local, so trust me.
That's about how often I go to Jiro-style ramen too.
Yeah, same for me with Jiro. It's not the kind of place you casually wander into just because you're hungry.
Honestly it was a bit underwhelming for me.
Maybe I hyped it up too much in my head, but it's basically a solid, classic soy-sauce ramen with a ginger kick — nothing more, nothing less. Good or bad, it was exactly what I expected.
But the location of Aoshima Shokudo's main shop is unbeatable.
It's basically the scene where Ken Takakura's character, fresh out of prison, eats ramen in "The Yellow Handkerchief."
If you go in winter while it's snowing, it's incredibly atmospheric — with that bonus, it might actually taste amazing.
Did you eat it in winter?
The whole point is eating it in winter and then warming yourself up afterward — that's part of the package.
apparently locals there call it "chuka soba."
Also, there's a good chance the sushi wrapped in green paper sitting on the table is also delicious.
Sushi at a ramen shop is a strange combo.
Where I'm from, they had oden instead in winter.
The kamaboko (fish cake) on top of Wakayama ramen is the best part.
The tangy mackerel sushi pairs really well with the rich soup too.
There's that much variety? Whenever I travel to Shikoku I always get pulled into Kagawa's udon and never make it to Tokushima, so the only Tokushima ramen I knew was the sukiyaki-style kind.
Exactly, exactly.
Tokushima's tourism is like 80% Awa Odori dance festival and 20% ramen, but honestly Tokushima ramen has the potential to outshine even the Awa Odori.
They should promote it nationally as a "Ramen Empire," the way Kagawa does with udon.
Funny thing is, both Wakayama ramen and oden are year-round fixtures in some places.
Ramen and oden really is a mysterious combo. I'd never make that at home.
Maybe it's a holdover from izakaya culture? Well, I'd still order it though.
But people in Tokyo seem to worship thin, clear broths.
I was even shocked once when someone said tonkotsu smells bad.
What people call Hakata tonkotsu or Nagahama ramen is mostly just smell with barely any umami.
That's about the level where things like kelp-water dipping noodles become trendy. I wish Kanto had a ramen shop as intense as Osaka's Kinryu — the kind where just walking past makes people who can't handle it feel queasy.
A properly rich broth where you can really taste the tonkotsu umami.
But without the heaviness you get from Iekei-style.
That's exactly the tonkotsu ramen I'd been searching for — and it turned out to be Kurume ramen (specifically Taiho Ramen).
I had it on a trip across Kyushu — ate at the main shop near Nishitetsu-Kurume Station on day one, and it was so good that after traveling through Kumamoto and Kagoshima I came back to Kurume just to eat Taiho Ramen again, lol.
The takana (pickled mustard greens) fried rice I got as a set was incredible too — I still can't forget it.
Hands down the best thing I ate in Kyushu.
About 20 years ago Tokushima ramen was so rich/strong that you needed raw egg just to mellow it out enough to finish it, but these days it's become milder and more crowd-pleasing, so raw egg doesn't really suit it anymore.
That's for people who order rice and turn it into TKG (raw egg over rice), right?
Whoa, I didn't know that.
Was rice already a standard set item back then too?
If you're picking just one, you've got to try Okuya in Ishii.
Okinawa soba, Yaeyama soba, and Miyako soba are all delicious.
The broth is great.
It's like a hybrid of Ramen Jiro and Okinawa soba.
They're so good, right?
Todai and Inotani are a trap.
Well, if you ate it at Todai, that reaction makes sense.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Even under the single umbrella term “regional ramen,” cases like tonkotsu (pork-bone) ramen — which splits into Kurume, Hakata, and Nagahama styles — show that many of these are really branches from one root rather than entirely separate dishes. Tonkotsu ramen is said to have originated in Kurume before spreading to Hakata and Nagahama, which makes it easier to understand why some posters in the thread argued “Kurume is the true mainstream.” Tokushima ramen, meanwhile, is nationally associated with a brown pork-bone-soy broth topped with a raw egg, but as pointed out in the thread, adding raw egg is mainly something tourists do — locally, the flavor has mellowed in recent years, and eating it without the egg has become the norm. This kind of gap between the “nationwide image” and the “local reality” tends to crop up with regional ramens all over Japan, and much of the thread’s debate stems from exactly that disconnect.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “What do you think is Japan’s best regional ramen?“
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