Today, August 25th is the memorial day of instant ramen noodles.  This world first instant ramen called “Chicken Ramen” was launched at this date in 1958 from a Japanese company,  NISSIN FOOD PRODUCTS CO., LTD.
You can see the number of “55” at top right of above photo.  This package is 55th anniversary model.

Recently, I watched a TV program telling the story about Chicken Ramen and Mr. Momofuku Ando who is the inventor of it.  That program was saying that he spent almost one year for the development.  I think his motivation was the strong sense of mission.  The nutrition situation at that time was still not good in Japan.  It is said he wanted to improve it and got an idea of instant ramen.  The TV said he impressed people were smiling when they are eating ramen noodles at the end of World War 2.
We will smile naturally whenever we eat yummy foods.  Ramen also seems to make us smile since old time.

Before Chicken Ramen appeared, ramen was usually called as Chinese Noodles in Japan.  After Chicken Ramen accepted in the market, the word of “Ramen” is getting popular and now we usually call this type of noodles as “ramen.”

We can enjoy many many different types of instant ramen noodles and total consumption per year is more that about 100 billion packages world wide.  I believe Chicken Ramen is an innovation of foods.

When we visit to supermarket, we can find many brands of instant ramen.  Also there are many small local brands.  I am not sure how many brands are in Japan.  However I prefer to make ramen from raw noodles, I would like to try instant ramen if I have find ones not tried yet.

Enjoy meal!