He Really Likes Ramen

A NOTW classic (April 2010): Computer hardware engineer Toshio Yamamoto, 49, this year (2010) celebrates 15 years’ work tasting and cataloguing all the Japanese ramen (instant noodles) he can get his hands on (including the full ingredients list, texture, flavor, price and “star” rating for each), for the massive 4,300-ramen database on his website, expanded recently with “hundreds” of video reviews and with re-reviews of many previously appearing products (in case the taste had changed, he told journalist Lisa Katayama, writing on popular blog Boing Boing). Yamamoto said he’d always eaten ramen for breakfast seven days a week, but cut back recently to five. “I feared that, if I continued at [the seven-day] pace, I would get bored.”