For many of the ramen obsessives — myself included — it was all, I suspected, about the hunt. Whether they were scouring the Japanese media for leads or wandering around, nose in the air, eyes alert to suspicious lines, finding gems among Tokyo’s 4,137 ramen shops (a conservative estimate, by the way) was a laborious process that made the final first slurp that much sweeter.

Be warned: if you read this on an empty stomach, you will crave a heaping bowl of shoyu ramen.