South Fukushima · ShirakawaNo.1109★★Open in map →
Shirakawa Ramen
— Hand-cut soy-sauce noodles of southern Fukushima
A castle town in southern Fukushima known nationally for a soy-sauce ramen with a hand-cut, wavy noodle. The shops are spread right across the city, and the visitor centre beside the platform keeps a searchable database of them.
- FromShinshirakawa Station
- ~3 minJR local, one stop from the shinkansen
- Get off atShirakawa Station (JR Tohoku Main Line)
- On foot
- Shirakawa Ramen
The sweet spot
Shirakawa is a famous ramen name in Japan and no kind of secret. What catches visitors out is the geography. The shops sit across the whole city and out into its edges instead of clustering on one street, which is precisely why the station keeps a search terminal. Without it you end up eating whatever happens to be nearest the platform.
Where it is
20 more notes in Fukushima · open the map →What to look for — in walking order
- JR Shirakawa Stationa white timber station building in Western style, with a clock set into its gable
- Shirakawa Kanko Stationthe visitor centre beside the platform building, selling local produce and crafts
- The Shirakawa Ramen Databasea touch-panel terminal inside that filters the town's shops by broth and noodle
- The sake-tasting countera bar in the same room pouring from three breweries based in the city
- Komine Castle parkcastle grounds and stone walls a few minutes north of the station forecourt
How to actually get there
- Shinshirakawa Station → Shirakawa Station (JR Tohoku Main Line local, one stop, about 3 min).
- Shirakawa Station → the visitor centre beside it (under a minute on foot).
- Search the ramen database for a shop that matches your taste, then head out to it.
- Walk up to Komine Castle park before your train back.
- One stop on the Tohoku Main Line from Shinshirakawa
- Shinshirakawa Station →(JR Tohoku Main Line local, about 3 min)→ Shirakawa Station. Shinshirakawa is the shinkansen stop out on the edge of town; Shirakawa is the older station in the centre, and the two are easy to confuse. Local trains on this stretch are not frequent, so read the departure board before you leave the shinkansen platform.
- Return from Shirakawa Station
- Trains leave Shirakawa north toward Koriyama and south back toward Shinshirakawa on the same line, so either direction reaches a shinkansen. Evening services thin out well before city hours — check the last departure when you arrive rather than when you leave.
About the place
Shirakawa ramen is a soy-sauce bowl with a clear broth, drawn from pork bone and chicken and kept light rather than rich. The noodle is the part the town argues over: it is cut and crimped by hand with a soba-maker's technique, wide, wavy and high in water. On top go spring onion, menma, spinach, a slice of naruto and a chashu whose rim is often stained red, an old-fashioned finish most regions dropped long ago. More than a hundred shops serve it in and around a city you could cross in a morning, and no two of them read the recipe the same way.
How to enjoy it
Eat first and sightsee afterwards, because the shops keep kitchen hours rather than tourist hours. Use the terminal before you set off: the shops are far enough apart that the walk between two of them can outlast the train ride from the shinkansen. The visitor centre is open from nine in the morning until six in the evening, so an early arrival gives you the widest choice.
Background & history
The line the town tells begins in 1887, when a confectioner opened a sweet-soup shop here and found that summer emptied it. His son went to Yokohama to learn Chinese noodle cooking and came back to open a hand-made ramen shop in 1921. For decades it stayed a local food. It spread shop by shop and apprentice by apprentice through the twentieth century, until the city stopped treating it as lunch and started treating it as a reason to come.
Before you go
- Cash
- Ramen shops here are small independent kitchens, so carry cash. Inside the visitor centre the produce shelves and the sake counter are paid; the search terminal is a touch panel you work yourself.
- Before you go
- The visitor centre closes over the New Year, from 29 December to 3 January, and the search terminal shuts with it. The Tohoku Main Line runs through open country on this stretch and can be held up by heavy weather. Winters in southern Fukushima are cold and dry.
- Another way
- From Koriyama you can take the Tohoku Main Line south to Shirakawa without changing trains. It is slower than the shinkansen, but it drops you on the same platform in the middle of town.
- After you get off
- Shirakawa Station and the visitor centre share one forecourt, and the walk between them takes under a minute. Komine Castle park lies a few minutes north on foot.