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I think Ramen(ラーメン)is the most popular food in Japan.
Maybe Japanese eat Ramen more often than Sushi.

Kumamoro-ramen
Ramen is noodle with soup.
There are two popular other kinds of noodle in Japan, Soba(蕎麦、そば)and Udon(饂飩、うどん).
Soba and Udon are Japanese original foods.
But Ramen came from China.
It is interesting that Ramen is more popular than Soba and Udon in Japan.

Ramen came from China, but Japanese changed it very much.

Basically, Ramen noodle is thicker than Soba, and thinner than Udon.
(Note that some Soba might be thicker than Ramen, and some Udon might be thinner than Soba.)
Ramen noodle is made of wheat flour as well as Udon.
Soba is made of soba flour (or mixture with wheat flour).
Ramen noodle is yellowish.
Udon is white.

Ramen's soup is characteristic.
It's thick, oily (fatty) and solty than Soba and Udon.

Typically, there are four kinds of soup -- shouyu (soy sause) based, shio (salt) based, miso based, and tonkotsu (豚骨 poak bone) based.
Some shops serves all of the soups.
But some shops serves only one kind.
One kind soup shop is more specialized.

Shouyu based soup is the most basic one.
It is nearest to Udon and Soba, and chinese noodle.
It is called as "Tokyo Ramen" as well.

Sio based soup is clearest one of the four.

Miso based soup is similar to the miso soup.
They say that Miso ramen came from Hokkaido, the most northan island of the four main islands in Japan.

Tonkotsu based soup is the thickest / oily one of the four.
The cook boils poak bone for very long time, so the soup is cloudy.
It came from Kyuushuu, the most southan island of the four main islands in Japan.

There are some other variation of Ramen soup -- Curry, Tomato, etc.

Ramen is quite various food.
For one shop, the noodle is quite thick, and for another shop, it is quite thin.
And the variety is tied with the place where the kind had come from.

Fukuoka Ramen's noodle is quite thin and the soup is tonkotsu based.
Kumamoto Ramen's noodle is thick and the soup is tonkotsu based.
(The photo above is Kumamoto ramen.)
It is intersting that Fukuoka and Kumamoto are the next prefactures.
There are more than hundred kinds of Ramens in Japan, and maybe you can eat them all in Tokyo.

To eat various Ramen is so much fun.
I recommend you to try.