But is ramen cheap at ramen restaurants in Japan?

I ask because I spent $17 on ramen in a large American city earlier this month.

Yes. Ramen in western cities is preying on the local perception that ramen is 'trendy' and therefor worthy of being expensive.

In Japan, ramen is more akin to burgers in America where sure you can go to a 'fancy' place and get a $15 burger, or you can go to the diner down the street and get a burger for $3. Ramen is the same, with plenty of fancy places if you want that type of meal, but the majority are small, quick, almost "fast food" type places with cheap food.

Yes, they are cheap. Usually around 600-1200 yen or $6-12

many of them reduce labor costs by having a vending machine outside where you get a token that indicates your order.

https://livejapan.com/en/in-tokyo/in-pref-tokyo/in-asakusa/a...

The current ramen fad in America relies on super rich broth, basically liquid bacon.

There are many styles of ramen in Japan, ranging from super simple broths to the liquid bacon style.

How do I ask for the simple stuff? The liquid bacon gives me unfortunate digestion symptoms that should not be named.

/u/op00to: This is challenging because ramen is classified by a mix of base, seasoning and thickness. Roughly bases can be: bones of chicken, pork, fish or in rare instances beef. Often there is blend of these bases

Seasoning: sea salt (shio), soy sauce (shoyu) and miso

Thickness is a spectrum ending with: kotteri (thick) and assari (light)

Now, how to pick a light broth? This will be highly context dependent. Most shops in Tokyo where I'm living right now are specialists so research will show you upfront whether it's tonkotsu (heavy pork), chicken paitan (heavy chicken), hakodate (light fish), tonkotsu-gyokai (blend of pork and fish).

If you're in Japan, I recommend the Ramen Beast app which has location based recommendations, high quality reviews and lists for lighter ramen.

If you're in NY and looking for a lighter bowl: I can vouch for most of the bowls at Nakamura, the yuzu shoyu at Mr. Taka, and all of the bowls at Yuji Ramen.

Note that as you mentioned since most shops in Japan specialize in a specific type of soup (i.e. the only differentiator is the tare and the toppings), it might be more useful to familiarize oneself with the characteristics some of the more common regional styles. For example, "Hakata-style" ramen generally describes a creamy tonkotsu soup, "Kitakata-style" is generally a chintan with shoyu tare and hand kneaded "temomi" noodles, Yokohama "iekei" generally tends to be a paitan with shoyu tare, Sapporo ramen is generally a pork soup with miso tare, etc.

This is not to say that e.g. Sapporo only has Sapporo-style ramen or Fukuoka only has Hakata-style ramen, but the names describe where the style is perceived to have originated from.

The water is slightly muddied (no pun intended...) by techniques like "double soups", i.e. mixing multiple soups in the same bowl. In some cases a chintan might be mixed with a paitan, etc.

Some ramen joints in the states offer non pork broth ramen options. But I'm the states the options are predominantly pork

Skip the tonkotsu and try another broth like miso?

Vegan ramen.

I don’t think Americans invented tonkotsu broth.

It doesn't seem like they tried to imply that given that they stated the diversity of broth options in Japan.

"Liquid bacon" seems quite disingenuous and cynical. It's thick broth that is, reportedly, full of collagen. That doesn't sound like liquid bacon to me.

I can only speak from my experience: Yes, it's cheap, but it's not the cheapest around. It tends to be in the 500-1000Y range depending on toppings. But that range also describes a great variety of restaurants in Japan: soba, teishoku, convenience store prepared meals - all are in the same range.

It's been 15 years since I lived in Japan, but IIRC it was on average among the cheapest foods there (as it is pretty much everywhere in Asia).

Low cost ingredients, easy/fast to make, possible to cook bulk "batch" in large pot etc.

It’s not easy to make. The broth is rich and takes a lot of time and skill.

I stand corrected. I probably then saw just the last steps and chef was using previously made broth.

A $10 ramen is considered expensive in tokyo.

$6 is standard.

I had some really great ramen recently in Tokyo. I would say the place was no fancier than... well... above Jimmy Johns under Olive Garden.

Downtown Tokyo, absolutely delicious ramen, $6 USD or so.

Noodles (soba, udon, ramen) are among the cheapest foods in Japan - commonly 8-10 USD.