[steven]

I wouldn't think that eating ramen every day is a good thing... maybe once a week. It has a lot of salt and often times a lot of fat/oil in it.

After being in Japan for a while I thought there was no such thing as bad ramen. That is until two weeks ago-- I had the worst ramen of my life (it was at a chain place). Then a week later I got ramen at a matsuri and that was some pretty rank ramen.

Having travelled around a lot of Japan I can safely say my town has some of the best ramen in the country. There was one ramen that I had in Tokyo, though... it was like yakiramen or something (but it had soup and stuff like that). I had taken a night bus there and had literally 12+ hours to kill, so I just walked around for a while and took a bunch of trains trying to get lost. During that time I found some of the best ramen I'd ever had! If I can find that place again I'd be quite grateful.

As much as I say Ramen is unhealthy, it has become my Japanese version of a cheeseburger. It's very nice to have ramen every now and then. It's quite filling and leaves you really satisfied (if you get the good stuff). There are many different kinds of ramen-- I discovered 冷やし中華 while in Japan... and I also figured out how to faithfully make it myself. It's quite good and I'd imagine it to be much healthier than regular ramen. It is also one of the easiest things to go out and eat alone in Japan. Making good ramen is an art-- if you've ever tried you probably know what I mean. With all the good ramen places in Japan though you'd think it was easy to make.