Today I went outside in the sauna to Osu, the place south of Sakae where there are a lot of cheap electronics stores and stuff. Kind of like a poor man’s Akihabara. Anyway, I saw this vending machine there that had ramen in a can. And I　wasn’t the only one amazed by it. Nearly every passerby stared and remarked about this product.

Ok, so it’s not actually noodles, but to keep a noodle-like consistency in the environment of a hermetically-sealed can, they use konnyaku (蒟蒻), this is a product made from a plant used in a lot of Japanese food (frankly, I’m partial to the konnyaku boiled in miso). Anyways, I tried some of the cold stuff (hiyashimen), and it was, well, not really ramen. The stock was pretty delicious, and tasted like something that they put a lot of thought into. But there were two pieces of bamboo shoots, and one little chunk of meat or something. It comes with a kind of nifty little plastic fork, but that’s a really strange utensil to be eating ramen with. So I think this product would be really nice on a camping trip, when you don’t have a stove available. But as it is, you can go one block from this machine to Sugakiya and get a real bowl of ramen for the same price. So the jidouhanbaiki thing - I don’t think it’s going to make it. (And by the way, even though lots of people who made comments about this stuff, and how amazing it seemed, I was the only one who actually bought a can during the few minutes I was around the machine.)