5AM Ramen - Frank, Part 1

The Japan Travel Pros Podcast

In this episode of the Japan Travel Pros Podcast, host Ari interviews Frank, the creator behind 5AM Ramen, about his deep-seated passion for r

Key takeaways

Frank's childhood was shaped by Sapporo Ichiban instant ramen varieties like miso, shoyu, and shio.
5AM Ramen evolved from a personal food blog into professional tasting tours in Tokyo districts like Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Ueno.

Main topics

Evolution of 5AM Ramen
Tokyo food tourism

Notable quotes

I was raised on ramen.

Conclusion

The episode provides an appetizing look at how culinary passion can be

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) get people to enjoy as much ramen variety as possible. That's basically the idea behind the Ramen Tasting Tour. Two different ramen shops that serve ramen, but are two different types of ramen. It's like eating two different dishes, two different food categories. And that's to me what makes ramen so, so fun. Everybody has their own preferences and the wonderful thing about ramen is that you could talk to people for hours about why this style is better than that and it's so much fun because there's so much variety. Speaker 1 (0:38) Thanks for checking in. This is the Japan Travel Pros podcast. Each week, we bring you stories and fresh perspectives about the people and places that make Japan so interesting. Along the way, you'll hear practical advice for planning your own trip. I'm your host, Ari, co-founder of Japan Travel Pros. In this episode, we're talking ramen. And if you've been listening to this podcast for a bit, you can probably guess that it's a topic I'm pretty happy to be spending some time on. Our guest in this episode, and the next one for that matter, is Frank from 5AM Ramen. I first came across Frank through his YouTube channel. It's great, by the way. Now, on that channel, Frank has eaten his way through an incredible number of ramen shops around Japan, around the world even. He goes pretty deep into the different styles, regional variations, even the people behind those ramen shops. So as somebody who's been eating ramen in Japan for quite a while myself, I'd really been looking forward to this conversation, and it ended up being even more fun, more interesting than I could have expected. I also know Frank's work from another direction. In addition to this podcast, Aki and I run the Japan Travel Pros consulting business, and a number of our clients have taken Frank's ramen tours and his food tours in Tokyo. And just to be clear, this is not a paid promotion or anything like that. We reached out to Frank because I wanted to have him on the podcast, and Frank was gracious enough to take the time and sit down with us. We vouch for Frank's tours because we've had quite a few clients become his clients, too, and they've had great experiences. We'll put all the links in the show notes, along with Frank's 5 a.m. Roman YouTube channel, of course. Really recommend that you check it out. It's so good. Make sure you subscribe. Now, what I really enjoyed about this conversation is that we got to go pretty deep. On ramen itself, we talked about Frank growing up in Tokyo, his earliest ramen memories, and mine too. How 5am ramen got its name, how Frank went from writing about ramen to leading ramen tours and making videos. And then eventually we get into some bigger questions about what ramen actually is and why there's so much room for variety and experimentation. Now, we talked for quite a while, so as I alluded to earlier, we're going to make this a two-episode type of deal. This is part one. Part two will be out on the heels of this episode. Coming right up, the conversation with Frank from 5 a.m. Ramen. Let's get started. Speaker 2 (3:04) I Speaker 1 (3:05) grew up in Tokyo. Speaker 2 (3:05) That said, I like to say I was raised on ramen. And at a very young age, I have fond memories of my mother cooking Sapporo Ichiban instant ramen. They're most famous for their miso ramen, but we would often rotate between miso, shoyu, and shio, or miso, soy sauce season, and salt season varieties. And my mom would use those packets, throw in vegetables, protein. and so forth. And I think from the three, just on a personal note, I think shio or salt-seasoned ramen was probably my favorite. So I was introduced to ramen at a very young age, but it wasn't really until I was an adult that I appreciated it more in terms of how deep the ramen rabbit hole goes, so to speak. Speaker 1 (3:54) So your mom's making the ramen at home and already... kind of leveling up on that more so than let's say the average college student in the US? I Speaker 2 (4:02) think so. I think compared to some of the cheaper ones, Sapporo Ichiban is very good quality. But I suppose at the same time, it's still instant ramen and it was a gateway for me to bigger things in the ramen world in the same way that it might be a gateway for a college student in the US or elsewhere. Yeah, it might not for them lead to ramen eating in Japan in the way that it did for me, but... I guess there's similarities there too. And yeah, a lot of people still think of ramen as instant ramen first and foremost. Do Speaker 1 (4:32) you have any recollection or memory of eating a bowl of ramen in a restaurant, in an ramen shop? What was the first time and what stands out? Speaker 2 (4:40) It all kind of blurs together because I've had so many bowls of ramen. But I do remember in high school there were... couple local ramen shops I would go to with friends and it might not have been the most spectacular ramen in that it was pretty straightforward. Well, it's just your local neighborhood shop, but I do remember, of course, enjoying it. And then I think getting a little bit older, part of the 5am ramen. branding, let's say, was that, okay, after a night out, ramen is a nice way to finish the evening, a kind of ramen nightcap, if you will. So I think, I guess what I'm saying is that in different phases of my life, ramen has been there. Earlier, and certainly before now, it was with a more rudimentary understanding of it. And of course, now I know that that much more. Of course, there's still so much to learn. I'm still a ramen student, so to speak. But yeah, I appreciate it more as an adult, even though I was technically eating it from a very young age. Let's Speaker 1 (5:38) talk about that 5 a.m. for a little bit and what that means in Japan in particular, in Tokyo especially, and probably involving a last train, maybe even a missed last train or an intentionally missed last train, and then an all-night followed by something just before the first train, perhaps. Speaker 2 (5:53) Oh, exactly. Using that phrase again there, ramen nightcap, I think. In the same way that maybe a donor kebab in Berlin would be the way to end a night, perhaps a slice of pizza in New York. I think ramen is for a lot of people here a way to finish a night of drinking. That was the case for me in my younger years. I think finishing the night with a bowl of ramen before going to bed and 5 a.m. ramen, the neon colors and the whole design, it's really... I think speaking to that like a bowl of ramen at 5 a.m. after a night out. And of course, I don't do that now. I don't have the ability to do that now. Yeah, that's kind of how the whole naming started. I think, yeah, fun, a fun kind of wacky, wacky approach to ramen. Speaker 1 (6:44) Yeah, fun. And I think that that describes how you keep the channel in general, kind of keeping it loose, keeping it fun. You're not. You're not taking yourself too seriously. You're taking the subject matter seriously to the extent that it needs to be respected. Speaker 2 (6:56) I take, of course, ramen seriously. I think it's a fascinating subject, but certainly on the channel, I don't pretend to be a food critic. You know, I don't, I've made ramen, but I don't make it like these ramen chefs do. So I think I come at it from an angle of just like, yeah, I like eating ramen. It's fun. And I'm happy to share my thoughts on each bowl that I'm... I'm having. And I think that ties to maybe the whole 5am ramen logo and everything. Speaker 1 (7:22) Evolving from personally, not to the channel yet, but evolving personally from 5am to, geez, yeah, this is a food I could eat for lunch one day or for dinner one day and maybe taste it differently. And then, yeah, how did it evolve or expand from there? Speaker 2 (7:36) 5amramen.com was basically a blog. I very much enjoyed taking photos and also writing. the website, the blog was exactly that. I'd visit a ramen shop and write about it, share the photos that I took there. That was a hobby, if anything. I like ramen. Here's a place where I can talk about it. I was having a conversation with friends one day, unfortunately not over ramen, but having a conversation. And one of them was like, why don't you do ramen tours as a tour guide? And it just kind of threw me off. And I was like, huh, I never thought about being a tour guide. That's an interesting idea. And then next thing I knew, a couple weeks later, I was doing ramen tours for people visiting Japan, people visiting Tokyo. And I think after a certain point, I realized that, well, if I basically do this full time, this could very much be feasible. It's an enjoyable job, of course, meeting people from all over the world, talking about ramen, sharing my love of ramen with everyone. But it reached a point where I was like, okay, actually, financially, this could be feasible as well. I think there's enough demand. There's a lot of people coming to Japan. There's a lot of people that want to eat ramen here. And I basically pivoted. So 5am ramen became not just a love letter to ramen in a blog form, but also actual tours, ramen tours. Speaker 1 (9:01) And this is what point on the timeline in terms of Japan travel, as you mentioned, kind of blowing up? This was 2018. Speaker 2 (9:08) And I was kind of working in travel at the time. Not quite travel travel, but I was getting a taste of like, okay, wow, Japan tourism is really taking off. As you said, of course. COVID was there, unfortunately, not too much later after that. But all of that said, we're here in 2026 and Japan is, of course, as you know, a very popular country for visitors. So yeah, the ramen tours, I think that pivot made sense, certainly still makes sense today. And it's quite niche. I think there's a lot of great food tour operators out there, but there weren't a whole lot of ramen tour operators or guides. So I think that also was part of my decision that, well, if I can use some of this knowledge base that I've built up and just share. more ramen information with people, take them to great ramen shops. Like this would be a lot of fun. And also I think I could do it full time. Speaker 1 (10:06) What were the first tours like and what did you learn and how did it change from there? How did it evolve? How did it grow from there? Speaker 2 (10:12) The tours originally started out as we'd sit down over coffee and I would present on a tablet information about ramen, where ramen started, the different styles that are out there, how ramen has evolved and so forth. There was even a ramen quiz just to see how much people might know about ramen to begin with.