The Ramen King and I: How the Inventor of Instant Noodles Fixed My Love Life

The Ramen King and I is an incredibly absorbing book. The stories are a testament to the phrase, "Truth is stranger than fiction." The intimidating sushi chefs, the initiation processes to graduate from the table to the sushi bar, the ramen noodle slurping rituals, all of this, had me chuckling but also learning about Japanese culture, driving motivations and ultimately about my own personal goals. It is not necessarily a self help book but if you need to understand your own obsession with noodles at the very least as well as about your other possibly more involved fixations, this book may be the soba of our times....

Well, there were so many parts of this book I really enjoyed. Very funny and made me laugh. Other parts, gosh. Andy, Andy, Andy...he was a very bad boy. VERY bad. And when he was bad, I didn't like him very much. In fact, I wanted very much to throw the book across the room when he repeated AGAIN and AGAIN the same bad behavior. But, he kept getting the girls. Somehow he would keep pulling them in. And that is what Andy did to me; he kept pulling me in. I couldn't stop reading. I love all things Japanese and I just ate up everything Andy wrote about Japan, the culture and it's people. Oh, and the food! The descriptions and stories around the food were just right! When I finished reading the book I felt satisfied and pleased that I had read it. It was fun reading about everything Andy did (and had to stop doing) as he moved forward towards redemption. Well written and frightfully honest. Recommended!

I found this book to be beautifully written, honest, funny and oddly profound. I read the Kindle edition in one day, mostly on trains and subways. It made for a very good companion on an otherwise difficult day, and reminded me to accept my limitations and imperfections. David Sedaris fans will love this book.

Every once in a while, I'll be reading through a text and come to a part that is so transcendent, so sublime that I have to close the book, right in the middle of the juicy part, and hug it to my chest. If not for my inability to type with a book pressed against me, there it would be right now. 'The Ramen King and I' is a memoir that is so much greater than the sum of its (great) parts. I recommend this book to any gypsy who is searching for an unapologetically quirky soul trip changing bullet trains through the places where you come to the somewhat frightening realization that desire breeds (only) more desire, and that it can easily become something, erm, difficult to control. But it is in the difficulty, the failure to control all aspects of the sometimes hilarious, sometimes treacherous path we all must tread, where necessary confrontations with our inner demons happen. Andy Raskin is a wonderful, wonderful fellow traveler on just such a path. Not only is the subject matter intriguing because of it's universal resonance (we all know what it is to struggle, to fail, to wish so much that we could somehow arrive at better versions of ourselves) but Raskin doesn't beat the reader over the head with the light that dawns for him on his journey (which soon becomes the journey of the reader.) He allows profound and sometimes surprising insights to speak for themselves with a wit so subtle and yet so full of pathos it, well, it makes ya wanna close the book and hold it to you.

The Ramen King and I is a fun, engaging read, a highly personal memoir about love, sex, and one man's relationship to...Momofuku Ando. In The Ramen King and I, American journalist Andy Raskin recounts how he made instant-ramen inventor Momofuku Ando his spiritual guide - despite never actually having met the man -- while attempting to discover why he sabotages relationships with women. Thoughout the book, Raskin is unable to maintain healthy long-term relationships with the women in his life. He juggles girlfriends on multiple continents and falls in and out of love in the time it takes to boil water for a serving of Nissin Chikin ramen. Raskin travels to Osaka to visit the Instant Ramen Museum and hopefully meet his hero/quasi-god. Part travelogue, part mystery as he begins to uncover the secrets of Ando's life, part Japanese food porn, and part self-help, The Ramen King and I is an engaging book that made me laugh and cry at the same time. I especially enjoyed Raskin's accounts of his travels in Japan, description of Japanese Culture, and his visits to many restaurants. I would highly recommend this book as a "fun read" for anyone who loves a little soap opera-esque drama, Japanese Culture, and food porn.