The Ramen King and I

by Andy Raskin

  He calls his grandfather “a strict disciplinarian” and an excellent role model for life as an entrepreneur. Starting in elementary school, Ando was expected to do his own laundry and to cook for himself. He learned how to dress chickens, and made box lunches each morning for himself and his sister. He was surrounded by the vitality of commerce—steady streams of customers and suppliers, workers busily preparing shipments, and the sounds of looms operating in the neighborhood.

  At age twenty-two, with an inheritance from his father, Ando started a company to import socks from Japan. He focused on synthetic fabrics that were just becoming available. Demand was so high that, to ensure supply, he left Taiwan and established a wholesale buying operation in Osaka. On the side, he took management classes at Kyoto’s Ritsumeikan University. By the time he was twenty-eight, Ando had built a thriving business.

  Four years later, during one of Ando’s visits back to Taiwan, Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor. In Conception of a Fantastic Idea, Ando writes that, as he listened to radio reports of the bombing, he decided to return to Japan and never again set foot in his home-land. But in none of his autobiographies does he really explain why, and it’s easy to draw the conclusion that he’s not being entirely forthcoming.

  Of the decision, he simply states (in Magic Noodles), “It is difficult to communicate exactly how I was feeling at the time, except to say that there was something cutting into my heart.”

  The longer I was abstinent from dating and sex, the more ramen showed up unexpectedly in my life. Typically, it would appear just after I had written in my notebook.

  Momofuku: (48 days) Josh just called me into his office. His office is on the side of the building with gorgeous views of the Bay Bridge and the Oakland Hills. He said he wants to do a story in the magazine about a new mobile phone that everyone’s buying. The company that makes it is in Chicago, so I asked him if he wanted me to go there and do some interviews. He said that no, he wanted me to edit the story and hire a writer. So that means he’s thinking about promoting me to an editor! I’ve never edited anything in my life, but I’m really excited to try it. I’m so excited that I wanna go online and meet someone. So it’s not just when I’m down that I want to meet someone. It’s also when I’m excited. Matt says excitement can be like money in your pocket, capital you think you can spend on getting someone to like you. What will I do with it if I don’t spend it? My father once said, “Money burns a hole in your pocket.” By “your” he meant my pocket, not pockets in general.

  I called a writer I knew in Chicago and left a voice mail message. He had just written a book about economic development in Asia, and I congratulated him on breaking into the New York Times best-seller list. The next day, he called back. I was at lunch, so he left a message:

  “Cool, I’d be into doing the story. Give me a call back and we’ll talk. And thanks for the kind words on the book. Hey, you used to live in Japan, right? Are you by any chance into instant ramen? Because I am getting totally into it. My favorite is an Indonesian brand called Indomie. Their Chicken Rendang has five—count ’em—five flavor packets. This is not instant ramen. This is theater!”

  Momofuku: (58 days) I am so bored. I’m on vacation from work, but I didn’t go anywhere, and I want more than anything to place an ad on Craigslist and meet someone. I thought maybe I would call Matt and ask him to reduce the ninety days to sixty, but I know what he’ll say. I had two weeks of vacation time saved up, so it was, like, use it or lose it, but I couldn’t think of anywhere I wanted to go, even though I still have some frequent flier miles left from my management-consulting days if I wanted to take a trip. I thought about going hiking in South America or scuba diving in the Caribbean, but the idea of going to those places by myself—without the chance to hook up with someone—seems lonely and boring. Two days ago, for the first day of my vacation, I went to a meeting at the church in the morning and then I spent the rest of the day cleaning my apartment. Yesterday I went to a meeting at the church, paid my bills, and watched TV. When I woke up this morning, I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I stayed in bed and read Spider Monkey in the Night, a collection of Haruki Murakami short stories.

  I once met Murakami. It was while I was getting my MBA. I was taking a Japanese literature class at the University of Pennsylvania, and for my final project I translated one of his short stories. It took place in a hotel, and one of the main characters was a guest who was always smelling her hand. My professor happened to know Murakami’s wife, who arranged for me to meet him at Princeton (where he was giving a lecture). I found him in a dark, Gothic hallway, and sitting on cement benches, we discussed the story I had translated. I asked Murakami what the smell on the woman’s hand represented, but he wouldn’t tell me. “What do you think it represents?” he kept asking back. I couldn’t understand why a writer would write something like that and not tell a student what it represented.

  Several stories in Spider Monkey in the Night had food-related titles, including “Croquettes,” “Donut-ification,” “Eel,” “Beer,” “Milk,” and “Donuts Again.” In the final chapter, Murakami had composed a song to the tune of “If I Had a Hammer.” He called his version “Ramen in the Morning.” “Honestly,” Murakami wrote in an afterword, “I don’t like ramen. I don’t even like walking past ramen restaurants. But with this ramen song, it was as if I had been dragged by fate to write it. If you feel the urge, sing along.”

  Honestly, I had nothing better to do.

  Delicious menma1

  Roast pork in the morning

  Ramen for breakfast, I am so glad

  Broth is hot and good

  Scallions so nice and green

  Just that, there’d be love between my brothers and my sisters

  I am satisfied

  Slurpin’ it down

  Bamboo shoots in the morning

  Ramen for breakfast, I am so glad

  Together you and me

  Cheeks all nice and red

  Just that, there’d be love between my brothers and my sisters

  I am satisfied

  Your loss if you don’t eat it

  Ramen in the morning

  Today’s another clear day outside, sun shining bright

  I ate some seaweed

  Drank some soup, too

  Just eating that, there’d be love between my brothers and my

  sisters

  I am satisfied

  On the fourth day of my vacation, my friend Ellen called. It was Ellen who, a year earlier, turned me on to the record company that produced the CDs for Pottery Barn and Eddie Bauer. We had been driving to the beach in her car when I opened her glove compartment and discovered that it was filled with CDs branded by chain stores. She owned Williams-Sonoma: Dinner Is Served, Pottery Barn: Sounds of Soul, and Swingin’ Holiday, a collection of big-band Christmas songs distributed by plus-size clothier Lane Bryant. “I don’t know how I got that one,” Ellen said at the time. “I’m a size four.”

  For a long time, Ellen and I enjoyed an ambiguous relationship that included a onetime hookup, but now I couldn’t do that. She said she was house-sitting at her wealthy friend’s home, and that there was a big pool. Her friend Carla would also be there, and Ellen invited me to join them. At first I thought it might be a bad idea, because the last thing I needed on Day Fifty-Nine was to be alone with two bikini-clad women, one of whom I had been involved with. But I was bored sitting at home, and Ellen and I wouldn’t be alone.

  Not that I thought it would do any good, but I found myself whispering Matt’s prayer as I drove south on Highway 101.

  O Momofuku, show me how to live so that I may better do your will.

  The house was in Woodside, a Silicon Valley suburb famous for sprawling homes, wooded vistas, and dot-com millionaires. It took about an hour to reach it from San Francisco. Ellen’s directions led to a curvy street and then a dirt road. I made my way up a long, steep driveway and parked in front of the house, one of the largest I had eve
r seen. The front door was open, so I walked in. The owners must have been art collectors; huge contemporary paintings hung on the walls. I spotted Ellen and Carla through the back window. They were sitting by the pool.

  “Hey, you guys.”

  Ellen was overjoyed to learn that I had brought along Jiffy Lube’s Romantic Moments, a CD I had purchased while getting an oil change.

  “I cannot even believe this thing exists,” Carla said.

  Ellen wore an orange bikini and she was lying on a deck chair. Carla’s bikini was turquoise, and her feet dangled over the pool’s edge. Part of me was disappointed not to be alone with Ellen, but part of me was relieved.

  “Hey, why aren’t you at the magazine today?” Carla asked.

  She and Ellen worked as freelance marketing consultants, but they were between contracts, and the downturn in the Silicon Valley economy was making it hard to find new jobs. I sat on the deck chair next to Ellen’s.

  “I’m off for a week. I had the vacation time.”

  “Use it or lose it,” Ellen said.

  “Right.”

  Carla wanted to know why I hadn’t taken advantage of the opportunity to travel.

  “I thought about it, but I couldn’t come up with anywhere I wanted to go.”

  “Come on,” Carla said. “There’s no place you want to see?”

  Carla slid into the pool and climbed onto an inflated blue raft. She paddled around with her hands.

  “Mostly I’ve just been cleaning my apartment and reading,” I said.

  Carla didn’t give up.

  “You mean to tell me that there’s nothing in the whole world that interests you?”

  I thought about it.

  “Well, there’s this one thing,” I admitted.

  “Yeah?”

  “You remember when I was in the hospital?”

  Ellen remembered, sort of.

  “For your spleen, right?”

  “Gallbladder. Anyway, the day after the surgery, I read an article in a Japanese magazine about the inventor of instant ramen.”

  Carla sat up on her raft.

  “The inventor of what?”

  I repeated it.

  “You mean, like Top Ramen?” Carla asked.

  “That’s one of his brands.”

  I told Carla and Ellen about how Ando spent a year in his backyard shack, and about the managerial training on the deserted island. I did not tell them that I had been writing letters to Ando about my love life. They were both laughing.

  “He also invented the cup. You know, Cup Noodles. And he built a museum dedicated to instant ramen. It’s supposedly across the street from his house.”

  “I can’t explain why,” Carla said, “but there’s something inherently funny about instant ramen.”

  Ellen agreed. “I know a guy who writes songs about instant ramen and sings them at parties.”

  I told her about Murakami’s ramen song, and sang a few bars.

  “So, is this inventor of instant ramen still alive?” Ellen asked.

  “Barely. He’s ninety-four. According to the article, though, he sometimes comes to the museum and makes instant ramen with the visitors.”

  “What I would like to know,” Carla mused, “is what makes a guy decide to spend a year in a shack trying to invent an instant noodle.”

  “Right?” I said. “I was wondering about that, too.”

  Carla lay back down on the raft, closing her eyes. “You know, you should interview him and write an article about his company.”

  “Tried that. Their PR department stopped returning my e-mails.”

  Ellen: “Where does he live?”

  “In Japan. Osaka.”

  “You should just go there!” Carla yelled. “Just show up.” She was still lying on the raft, but laughing now. “Maybe he’ll make instant ramen with you.”

  With that, Carla began splashing water in the direction of my lounge chair. She prepared to defend herself, expecting me to lean over the edge of the pool and splash back. But she needn’t have worried, because her suggestion had sent my mind elsewhere.

  It had been ten years since my failure to fill in the blank while screaming the Go Forth line in front of the Kmart Corporate Head, and even longer since I had watched the TV show. Nevertheless, I began recalling the ramen-related things that had happened of late: the recipe from Grandma Sylvia’s recipe box; the writer who had left an instant ramen recommendation on my voice mail; Murakami’s song; Ellen’s friend who wrote songs about instant ramen; and now Carla’s suggestion. As I thought about these things, I heard a loud voice in my head telling me to ignore them. I had not yet learned to really listen to this voice, but it must have been saying something like this:

  YOU SHOULD REALLY FORGET WHAT YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT DOING. YOU SHOULD REALIZE THAT THESE RAMEN-RELATED “THINGS,” AS YOU SO ELEGANTLY CALL THEM, ARE JUST VERY MINOR COINCIDENCES THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH FATE, DESTINY, OR FIGURING OUT WHAT’S BEHIND YOUR PROBLEM. YOU SHOULD TAKE A VACATION TO SOMEWHERE NORMAL, LIKE A BEACH, AND GO SWIMMING. YOU SHOULD FIND A WAY TO GET ALONE WITH ELLEN OR CARLA AND MAKE OUT WITH ONE OF THEM. MAYBE BOTH OF THEM. YOU SHOULD DO ANYTHING BUT WHAT YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT DOING, BECAUSE YOU WILL FAIL, AND THEN WHERE WILL YOU BE?

  I was not able to hear these words yet, like I said. All I knew was that I felt like an idiot for wanting what I wanted. Maybe because Carla and Ellen were splashing water in my face, though, I stayed awake to my desire, and eventually I found the strength to stand up on one of the lounge chairs. My shorts and T-shirt were soaking wet, but I screamed the line so loud that all of Silicon Valley could have heard me.

  “I wanna make instant ramen with Momofuku Ando!”

  There wasn’t much time left in my vacation, and I did not have an appointment.

  A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF MOMOFUKU ANDO, PART 4 : WARTIME ENTREPRENEUR

  During the war, Japan tightly regulated the manufacture and distribution of textiles, making it difficult for Ando to conduct business, so he expanded into other areas.

  He launched a company to make slide projectors, which the government used to train unskilled workers at munitions factories. In nearby Hyogo Prefecture, he purchased a sixty-one-acre mountain and turned it into charcoal, which he sold as fuel. With a business partner, he manufactured prefabricated air-raid shelters.

  The war made Ando rich. But as he writes in many of his books, the good times were about to end.

  “I did not realize that an unimaginable misfortune was awaiting me around the corner.”

  When I got home from house-sitting with Ellen and Carla, I still wasn’t sure that I was going to try to meet Ando without an appointment. But then I thought again about the recipe box and the voice mail from the writer in Chicago and Haruki Murakami’s song, and I wondered if Momofuku Ando was indeed showing me how to live. It was a preposterous idea, but I enjoyed believing it, so I traded in my frequent flier miles for a round-trip ticket to Osaka. The next morning, I bought ten installments of Ramen Discovery Legend at the Japan Center bookstore, stuffing them into my suitcase. On the way to the airport, I called Matt and told him where I was going. He had never heard of anyone trying to meet the person they had chosen to stand in for God, but he wished me luck.

  “May the noodles be with you,” he said.

  He was a big fan of Star Wars.

  Momofuku: (60 days) A few hours into the flight to see you, I am having thoughts about trying to hook up with a woman in Osaka. No, I don’t know anyone there, so I’m not talking about anyone specific. I mean, I’m having thoughts about trying to pick someone up. So what is happening right now? Everyone around me on the airplane seems riveted to the in-flight movie. It’s a romantic comedy starring Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler. In one scene, Ben, as a single dad, visits a video store and hits on the cashier, played by Liv. The message is that all men and women should aspire to this—to hitting on Liv Tyler and getting hit on by Ben Affleck. Men and women except for me, that is, because I made a commitment to Matt.<
br />
  United Airlines offered a choice between an American-style meal and a Japanese-style one. I chose Japanese-style, but the rice was cold and dried out. I couldn’t watch the movie without feeling bad, so I pulled Book Two of Ramen Discovery Legend from my carry-on.

  The episode I read was set at night, with Fujimoto cooking ramen at his stand in the park. There’s a portable TV near his stove, and he’s watching an interview with a ramen “producer” named Mr. Serizawa. An investor in several top-tier ramen shops (and a skilled ramen chef in his own right), Serizawa asserts in the interview that too many young men are being deluded by dreams of dassara and betting their lives on ramen. “They study ramen on the Internet and in ramen magazines,” he says, “and some of them eventually learn how to make good ramen. But ‘good’ won’t cut it in this world.”

  Was I deluding myself that I could change?

  Among the periodicals in the seat pocket, I found an issue of President, a Japanese men’s magazine. The cover headline said, “Sanju-dai no kachikata.” “How to Win in Your Thirties.” Even without opening the magazine, I was pretty sure that reading ramen comic books and trying to meet the inventor of instant ramen without an appointment would not be among the recommended activities. I thought about all of the times I had traveled to Japan, and I realized that I had never flown into Osaka.

  I didn’t know much about the area except for stereotypes. Osakans are supposed to be friendlier and more outwardly emotional than Tokyoites, and the city is famous for the street smarts of its merchants. (A traditional local greeting literally translates as “You makin’ money?”) A disproportionate number of Japanese comedians speak the brash, guttural Osaka dialect. The only time I had ever lived in the Kansai area—the region on the western side of Honshu centered around Kyoto and Osaka—was when my Japanese teacher in graduate school sent me and four classmates to Kyoto to improve our Japanese. We stayed in a college dorm, and every day, we toured the city with an expert in a different field. An architect led us through a centuries-old nagaya—a long, narrow dwelling—and an archaeologist gave us a tour of several kofun—burial mounds the length of football fields that began appearing in Japan in the third century. Other expert guides included a doll artist, a woodworker, and a tofu maker. On the last day, as a surprise, our teacher put us on a bus to Enryakuji, a Zen temple atop Mount Hiei, where my classmates and I were forced to endure twenty-four hours of zazen kunren (Zen sitting training) with monks of the Tendai sect. Along with the five of us, seventy-five teenage boys—new employees of a gas station chain—participated in the training as a corporate initiation ritual. The monks showed us how to clasp our hands together in the gassho pose and to sit on our heels with our shins under our thighs—what the Japanese call seiza-style. I found it incredibly painful, and my classmate Barry, an amateur bodybuilder with oversized thigh muscles, moaned in agony. While enduring the pain, we had to chant along with the monks.