There is a 3 in 1 yakisoba sold under a brand called maruchan. Apparently yakisoba makes the best seller among other instant noodles of its manufacturer Toyo Suisan Kaisha, Ltd products like Akai Kitsune (udon), Midori no Tanuki (soba), and other noodles.

Yakisoba, literally means fried noodle in Japanese, has become a brand to represent Japan. For all the festivals or matsuri one goes, you will never miss the chance to not seeing at least a few stores selling it.

The above yakisoba was taken at one izakaya, Kushi-hacchin. Whenever I go with a group monthly, we always end the gathering by ordering yakisoba. It's delicious and the taste and the volume are so great yet yummy that you wonder if this is manufactured at factory and just heat up at the kitchen.

Coincidentally, I found that there is a manufacturer in fact makes an automated machine that produces yakisoba. With it, you can make perfect yakisoba without thinking whether your staff cook the same every time etc.

By the way, the yakisoba just costs about 493 yen. You wonder how many yakisoba needs to be sold in order to get the returns. But there is the need and there is the machine available.

There is a famous Thai restaurant named Tinun that serves a variety of Thai local foods in Tokyo. There is one at Takadanobaba that serves mainly Tom Yam ramen. It seems has developed to the Japanese style where you can choose your topping like spiciness and coriander, etc.

When I went, I didn't feel so much at a Thai restaurant, rather just another ramen shop that I used to frequent. Ordered my ramen -- which is Tom Yam ramen --, the hardness of noodle you want, and the topping, coriander.

With the way Japanese has developed its ramen, I can feel that if any Asian noodles were well accepted here, there will be a trend it will be advanced by the customers to gain its popularity and perhaps come up with another style of eating, like Tom Yam ramen. Tokyo has such power to me.

Wonder which would be the next runners up.

When was the first ramen you had before? Could you tell which was your favorite? There has been tremendous change in ramen industry and the taste people are looking for also gone through a big change here in Japan. So as the instant noodle history. When I make ramen at home, I still prefer to use the raw noodle.

I can have noodles the whole week: ramen, udon, soba, yellow noodle, bihun, penne, pho, and I miss mee hun ker…