A new noodle chain in Japan gives diners a little peace. JACOB ADELMAN reports in an asap podcast.
Diners in the Ichiran restaurant in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Jacob Adelman)
Japan's ramen noodle shops are typically down-to-earth, collegial places, where diners slurp soup beside strangers and leave shouting thanks to chefs at work in exposed kitchens.
That's not the case with the ramen shops in the rapidly expanding Ichiran chain. Ichiran's noodle restaurants, which are spread across Japan, are drawing customers with one-person eating cubicles that isolate customers from one another, and from the restaurant's staff.
The idea is to provide customers with an environment that lets them enjoy their noodle soup free of distractions, company spokeswoman Yuko Yoshimura said. But writer Mark Schilling, a Japan pop culture expert who covers the country for Variety Magazine, said Ichiran's success is symptomatic of the social stresses of modern urban life in Japan.
"People get stressed out by all the interaction they encounter every day, on the train or whatever, so they want an oasis, a place where they can get away from it," he said. "So this serves that purpose."
Ichiran is wagering that Japanese customers aren't the only ones looking for a place to get away from it all with a bowl of noodle soup: the company recently opened a business office in New York City, to oversee its expansion into the United States.
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asap contributor Jacob Adelman is an AP reporter based in Los Angeles.
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