The Ramen King and I (18 page)

Along the walls, an elaborate time line traced instant ramen back to its roots. It started with the invention of boiled noodles—sometime around the birth of Jesus Christ—and continued with various international noodle developments, including hand-flattened noodles (China, 1200), udon (Japan, 1400), soba (Japan, 1600), and a beef-and-noodle stew called lagman (Central Asia, 1400). A separate, European branch presented the direct noodle ancestor of macaroni (Italy, 750), a proto-gnocchi (Italy, 1050), and spaghetti (Italy, 1400). All the branches converged at the year 1958, represented by a large bull’s-eye surrounding an orange-striped package of Chikin Ramen. To the right of the bull’s-eye, the time line placed instant-ramen-related developments in context with other historical events. Between 1966 and 1971, for instance, Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, the Beatles played a concert in Japan, and Nissin introduced Cup Noodles. The 1990s saw the unification of Germany and the launch of Nissin Rao (“Ramen King”), a high-end fresh-pack line. Not a lot happened in the 1980s, ramen-wise.

Leaving the main room, Yamazaki led me to the Cup Noodles Theater, where the walls were streaked with wavy lines of various colors. Inside, we watched an animated movie that showed how Cup Noodles was partly the result of a dream that Ando had one night around 1969. In the movie, a cartoon version of Ando traveled to America in 1966 to introduce Chikin Ramen to U.S. supermarket executives. To Ando’s surprise, the American businesspeople he met crumbled up his invention and put it in Styrofoam cups (not bowls!). After pouring boiling water into the cups, they ate the noodles with forks (not chopsticks!). On the plane home, a flight attendant served Ando a tin of Royal Hawaiian macadamia nuts, and Ando fixated on the container’s foil lid; he realized that, fitted on a Styrofoam container, the foil could serve as the top of a revolutionary packaging design in which instant noodles could be sold, cooked, and eaten. To ensure that the contents would cook evenly (and suffer minimal breakage during shipping), Ando designed a sloped cup that would suspend the disk of dried noodles above the cup’s bottom. In the factory, though, the noodle disk would often tilt to one side, allowing dehydrated shrimp, egg, and other toppings to slide off the top. That’s where Ando’s dream came in. In the cartoon rendering, a pajama-clad Ando is falling, headfirst, next to a Styrofoam cup that is also falling upside down. When he awakens, he designs an assembly line that holds the noodles on a platform and lowers the cup, upside down, over them.

It wasn’t clear to me what made the upside-down assembly line better than a right-side-up one, but afraid of looking dumb, I didn’t say anything.

“How about going inside the shack?” Yamazaki proposed.

I had thought he might never ask.

Back in the main hall, the replica of Ando’s shack beckoned like a shrine. As we approached, Yamazaki told me the shack had been reconstructed from extensive interviews with Ando and careful analysis of his actual backyard. Outside it, there was a noodle-drying rack, a bicycle, and a chicken coop for the Nagoya chickens that Ando had used to make his broth. (I knew from
Ramen Discovery Legend
that Nagoya chickens were considered ideal for ramen soup stocks.) Everything inside, according to Yamazaki, was as it had been on the morning of March 5, 1958—Ando’s forty-eighth birthday. (There was apparently no single day that Ando remembered inventing instant ramen, so his birthday had been chosen arbitrarily.) Yamazaki led me to the door of the shack, but he remained outside as I entered.

The interior was not unlike that of a toolshed in an American backyard except that, instead of gardening tools, it was filled with cooking equipment and food. A workbench was cluttered with a hand-cranked noodle cutter, a gas burner, a pair of cooking shears, a set of knives, a strainer, a set of dishes, cutlery, and a square-shaped wire mesh fryer. A small plaque next to a stack of newspaper advertisements explained that Ando had used the ads as scrap paper for taking notes while crafting his invention. In a large white soup pot, vegetables and chickens were being boiled for stock, and even after all the time I had lived in Japan, it took a good five minutes before I realized that the stock and the vegetables were plastic models. On the left side of the counter, (plastic) hot oil bubbled around a (plastic) piece of battered shrimp—a reference to how Ando’s wife’s tempura had led to his epiphany about frying. A lightbulb hung from the ceiling.

Suddenly, Ando’s voice came over a loudspeaker:

“I didn’t know what I was doing. No matter how many times I tried, nothing came out right. I simply couldn’t produce an ideal noodle. The hardest problem was drying the noodles and infusing them with flavor. In the beginning, I was completely in the dark. I brushed the noodles with the seasonings, but when I exposed them to hot air, they fell apart.”

Ando was talking about noodles, but I couldn’t help thinking about Maureen and Harue and Kim and all of my failed relationships.

I walked out of the shack, but Yamazaki was gone. I found him again in the gift shop, and when he saw me, he looked down, sucking air through his teeth.

“I am filled with regret,” he said, “because I just found out that it’s going to be very difficult to arrange a meeting with the chairman.”

I already knew the answer, but I asked why.

“I found out that it would be too difficult,” Yamazaki said.

Dejected, I said good-bye and walked to the museum’s front door alone. When I got there, a banner was hanging from the ceiling. The writing on it faced the museum’s interior, which is why I hadn’t noticed it on my way in. Four characters and one hiragana symbol were drawn several feet high in jet-black ink. The brushstrokes were bold and alive, and Ando’s signature was at the bottom.

The banner said
JINRUI WA MENRUI
.

In my mind, I translated it into English.

MANKIND IS NOODLEKIND.

D
riven by his torture-induced revelations about the importance of food, Ando supplemented his real estate activities with a venture to make salt. On a beachfront lot formerly owned by the Japanese Army, he hired young boys to pour sea water onto large iron sheets:

He launched his second food venture in 1947, founding what he called the National Nutritional Chemistry Research Institute. Two years had passed since the end of the war, but it was not yet uncommon for Japanese people, especially hospital patients, to die of malnutrition. The institute’s mission, therefore, was to develop a cheap, nutritious food product. One evening, Ando lay in bed thinking about potential ingredients, when he heard a frog croaking in his backyard.

“I instantly recognized this as a potential source of nutritional food.” (
Magic Noodles
)

Ando captured the frog, gutted it, and placed it in a pressure cooker.

Ando eventually produced a paste from cow and pig bones, which he sold to hospitals under the trade name Viseicle. It was a minor success, but more important, it put Ando in contact with officials at Japan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare. Under the American Occupation, the ministry had been promoting flour-based foods because the United States had made available its large surplus of wheat. Ando had no problem with flour, but the ministry’s approach irked him:

At the time, noodles were manufactured solely by small outfits incapable of feeding a mass market. Pointing this out, Mr. Arimoto asked, “Mr. Ando, if you are so enthusiastic about it, why don’t you do some research on how to produce such noodles?”

I
had been expecting Yamazaki’s no. I was prepared for it, thanks to
Ramen Discovery Legend
.

In an episode titled “Make Those Really Thick Noodles,” a burly youngster named Kano shows up at Fujimoto’s ramen stall in the park. Kano, it turns out, also dreams of
dassara
and wants to open his own ramen restaurant. His plan is to apprentice at a ramen shop called Yodonaga (known for its unusually thick noodles), but when Kano asks the grumpy old Yodonaga owner to take him on, the man refuses. Undeterred, Kano returns to Yodonaga every morning, falls to his knees, and begs. On the thirtieth day, the owner relents, making Kano his apprentice.

The day after touring the museum, I woke up at seven thirty and ate salmon-filled rice balls in the park near 7-Eleven. By eight thirty, I was standing in front of the entrance to Nissin headquarters. Yamazaki reported for work a few minutes later, and when he spotted me, he seemed afraid, as if he thought I was stalking him. Well, I guess I was. Luckily, I did not have to fall to my hands and knees before he invited me inside. He ushered me past the Greek statues and the bust of Ando, and we rode the elevator, silently, to the twelfth floor. He excused himself while the same woman from two days earlier led me to the same small room near the elevator.

I sat on the same sofa again, away from the door.

This time, when Yamazaki joined me, he was accompanied by a man who looked to be in his early forties. The older man wore black-rimmed glasses and a blue suit that looked more expensive than Yamazaki’s. He took the seat nearest the door, and Yamazaki sat next to him.

“I am Matsubara,” the other man said.

Matsubara handed me his business card, and from his title, his seat, his age, and his clothing, I understood that he was Yamazaki’s boss.

“I am Raskin. I’m sorry that I don’t have a business card.”

Matsubara sucked air through his teeth and looked me straight in the eye.

“We are truly honored that you are so interested in the chairman. But—I am deeply sorry to say this—the simple truth is that he does not do many interviews.”

“I see.”

“He’s ninety-four years old,” Matsubara reiterated.

I paused to indicate that I was not taking Ando’s age lightly.

“It’s just that I came all the way from the United States.”

The two bowed their heads and took deep breaths. I knew that it would not be easy for them to have a man travel all the way from the United States and not get what he wanted. There was a long, uncomfortable silence. In general, Japanese people can endure silence better than Americans can, but it was Matsubara who spoke first.

“You know, the chairman is going to do his annual press conference at a club for Osaka journalists in late August.”

I didn’t know.

“If you come back, you can attend.” It was just a few weeks away.

“I would love to attend!”

“You probably won’t be able to speak with the chairman directly,” Yamazaki said. “But you could be in the same room.”

I was filled with hope. I was so excited that I began telling Matsubara and Yamazaki about how ramen had helped me get through college, even though it was a bit of an exaggeration.

“We hear that a lot,” Yamazaki said, and I realized that he probably did. “Anyway, I’ll arrange a pass for you to the press conference.”

Matsubara excused himself for a moment, leaving the room while Yamazaki and I sat together in another uncomfortable silence. When Matsubara returned, he presented me with two books. The first was the catalog to the Instant Ramen Invention Museum. The second was
The Story of the Invention of Instant Ramen
, Nissin’s self-published English translation of
Magic Noodles
.

I accepted the books, thanking Matsubara with the most polite version of “thank you” I could muster. (There are easily over a dozen from which to choose.) While thanking Yamazaki, I backed my way onto the elevator. Walking out past the Greek sculptures and the security guard, I imagined the question I would ask Ando. Why did you suddenly commit to inventing instant ramen? I imagined myself asking it in Japanese at the press conference, even though Matsubara had said I wouldn’t get to ask any questions. Out on the street, the humidity seemed bearable now. I passed gas stations and electronics shops and restaurants and it struck me that Japan was not really so different from the United States.

When I entered the hotel lobby, the front desk clerk called out my name and handed me a phone message. “Please call. From Yamazaki.” It would have been expensive to call from my room, so I walked back outside and found a phone booth. Japan still had plenty.

“Moshi moshi,”
Yamazaki said.

“This is Raskin. You left a message?”

“Mr. Raskin. Yes . . .well, I just checked with the press club, and I’m afraid I have some bad news. It turns out that you have to be a member of the club to attend the chairman’s press conference.”

“Can I become a member of the club?”