Editorial Research Ranking

The Local Ramen Ranking
— All 25 Names Ranked, and the 8 With No Bearer or Shop Disclosure Found

RByline: Someone who reads the paperwork behind a name, not the claim itself (25 names scored on 6 axes / the 8 with no published backing are ranked too, and the absence itself is written down)

With ramen, taste cannot be turned into a score. Tabelog ratings, the length of a line, and votes are all things this article has decided not to use as axes.
So instead of what's in the bowl, this article set out to measure the "local" side of the name. Anyone is free to call something "local ramen," but who backs that name, and with what published words, can be checked in public material. Does a cooperative set the water-to-flour ratio of the noodle? Does the local government have a page that names the dish directly? Can the founding year be pinpointed in published material? Every one of these is something a page you can open and read either says — or doesn't say.
What this article found is that most "local ramen" sits outside any institutional framework. The Japan Patent Office has 798 regional collective trademarks in total, but only 4 of them match the 25 names in this article by name. Only 2 match the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries' 1,259-entry "Our Local Cuisine." Kitakata ramen, Sano Ramen, Hakata ramen, and Sapporo-style ramen are on neither list.
All 25 names are ranked. For 8 of them, neither the bearer group flying the name nor a published roster of the serving shops that carry it could be found. Those 8 names rank low not because they scored worse when measured, but because nothing came up when they were looked into. That distinction doesn't show up in the rank number itself, so later in this article there is a table naming those 8 names, and each card says so too. What lines up there is a run of well-known names, including Hakata ramen and Sapporo-style ramen. Names for which no publication turns up on either side cannot be told apart by this measure. There are, in fact, 2 pairs that land in a complete tie (Kyoto ramen and Sapporo-style ramen; Hiroshima ramen and Tokyo-style ramen). Since no new material was brought in to break the tie, the order between them carries no meaning.
The No. 1 name overall is Katsuura Tantanmen (8.30), No. 2 is Yonezawa ramen (7.96), No. 3 is Kitakata ramen (7.91). Only 2 names had some form of published material on every one of the 6 measures — Katsuura Tantanmen and Kasaoka ramen.

How This Ranking Is Built (Methodology)

To avoid settling "which is the single best local ramen" in one sentence, the score is split across 6 independent axes and combined with weights (total = Σ(axis × weight)/100). Taste ratings, word of mouth, review scores, line length, votes, sales, and fame are not among the axes. "How many lists a name appears on," the rule used to build the field, is never used for the order either. Each axis score is worked out mechanically from public material sorted into a tier from 0 to 3, using a fixed formula, axis score = 1 + 3 × tier (1 / 4 / 7 / 10) — this is not an editor assigning 0–10 points by feel. How each tier is defined is given in the description of each axis below, and the judgment behind each name — decided 1 at a time — along with its quoted evidence, is kept in the derivation record. Only within the same tier, bearer groups are ordered by how long ago they were founded and serving shops by how thick their published roster is, but that adjustment is set narrower than the gap between tiers, so reordering within a tier never crosses a tier boundary. In extracting facts, each fact was required, 1 at a time, to carry a verbatim quotation from the source text, machine-checked to confirm the quotation exists in the saved page, and every source URL was then retrieved again by the writer to confirm the quotation still reproduces. It was also machine-checked, before publication, that every numeral appearing in the card text can be traced back to either a verbatim quotation or a ledger value.

Axis	What It Measures	Weight
Definitional clarity	Whether the requirements for the noodle, soup, and toppings are published in writing by the bearer group or the local government (a standard that includes numeric values earns the top tier)	22%
Bearer existence	Whether a group that flies the name exists, and whether its founding year is published	19%
Shop disclosure	How strongly the shops that fly the name are published — as a roster, a count, or an approximate figure	18%
Name protection	Whether the same name is listed under the Japan Patent Office's regional collective trademarks, or the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries' "Our Local Cuisine"	15%
Local-government involvement	Whether the local government itself has a dedicated page, or whether it goes only as far as an affiliated body (a tourism association or tourism federation)	14%
Origin identification	Whether the founding year and the originating shop can be pinpointed from published material	12%

Normalization Rule

Taste, word of mouth, review scores, line length, votes, and fame are not among the axes. The number of lists a name appears on is not used for the order either (it is used only to decide the field). "Not on the list" is not read as "does not exist." The lowest tier of "name protection" means "not on these 2 lists," not "has no trademark." Ordinary trademarks, and other rights held by a group or a local government, were not investigated. "Could not be read" is kept separate from "was not there." The blank fields for Tokushima ramen, Onomichi ramen, and Kasaoka ramen are blank because the material could not be reached from this environment, not because no material exists, and each card states this. The tier depends on the type of source. A privately run museum is used only for the "origin" axis; a national government page counts for "name protection" but not for "local-government involvement." A tenant list from just 1 facility, or the shops in a one-off event, are not counted as a serving-shop roster. A "best of" feature article is not counted as a roster either — it is a list of shops an editor chose, not a mechanically assembled list of shops that carry the name. "Published" means visible to someone who opens the page. A listing sitting inside an HTML comment, invisible on screen, is not counted (1 such case — a shop counted from inside a comment — was actually found and corrected).

Scope / Unit

The field is every local ramen name that appears on 2 or more of 5 lists. The result is 25 names. The lists are: ① the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum's "Local Ramen from Around the Country" list (19 entries); ② the Japan Patent Office's full set of registered regional collective trademarks (798 entries); ③ the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries' registered dish names in "Our Local Cuisine" (1,259 entries); ④ standalone articles under the Japanese Wikipedia's Category:Local Ramen (174 entries); ⑤ the boldfaced entries in the Regional variations section of the English Wikipedia's Ramen article (8 entries). After matching names across lists, the unique count is 2,203, of which 25 appear on 2 or more. No name appears on all 5 lists. The most any name appears on is 4, for Wakayama ramen. The unit is entries: 1 local name equals 1 entry. No editorial hand-picking was done. All 25 names are ranked. On top of that, the 8 names for which neither the bearer group behind the name nor the serving shops that carry it could be confirmed as published are flagged and named later in this article. This flag is not the writer's own score threshold — it can be checked 1 name at a time against a verbatim quotation. A low rank on a flagged name does not mean it "scored worse" — it means "nothing came up," and that distinction does not show up in the rank number itself, so it is written out in the table and in each card. A complete tie is shown as a tie. Nothing is brought in to break a tie — not the number of lists a name appears on (which would stand in for fame), nor the year of origin (which would swap the axis for a different question).

Data Sources

All of it is published material from groups, local governments, or the national government. The field comes from the 5 lists above, and the material for each axis comes from the official pages of the group or local government behind each local name (25 names' worth, retrieved and saved by the writer). Gourmet media, roundup sites, review sites, and personal blogs were not used. The Japanese Wikipedia was used as a lead, not a source — it supplied candidate cooperative names, local-government names, and years, but every score was still worked out by going down to the primary material. Every fact, 1 at a time, carries a verbatim quotation from the source text, machine-checked to confirm the quotation is a substring of the original page (25 files in total, every fact matched, 0 mismatches). Every source URL was then retrieved again by the writer, to confirm the quotation still reproduces. The serving-shop roster does not take the count the assigned researcher reported; the writer recounted it from the saved page. This recount actually turned up cases that did not match the researcher's reported count. Founding years are listed after converting any dates the source material gives in the Japanese era calendar to the Western calendar (the original Showa- or Heisei-era notation is kept, unchanged, inside the quotation itself).

Compiled / Subjectivity

2026-08-10. Weighting definitional clarity most heavily (22) and origin the most lightly (12) is an editorial judgment, and the reason is given in the limits section. The gap between the No. 1 name, Katsuura Tantanmen (8.30), and the No. 2 name, Yonezawa ramen (7.96), is 0.34, and the top of the field is close. Published material is rewritten over time. The scores in this article are calculated from the published content at the time it was retrieved.

Switch the scoring lens ― changing the weights moves the ranking (recalculated on the same evidence, same scores)

Overall Ranking

★ First Edition

Findings Against Conventional Wisdom

① Of the 3 ramen names called "Japan's Big Three Ramen," they split into Kitakata ramen at No. 3, Hakata ramen at No. 19, and Sapporo-style ramen at No. 21. The city itself writes on its own official site, "Kitakata ramen is now known across the country, and together with Sapporo-style ramen and Hakata ramen it is also called one of Japan's Big Three Ramen." For that Sapporo-style ramen and Hakata ramen, neither a bearer group flying the name nor a published roster of shops carrying the name could be found. Being known and having a name backed by documentation are two different things — that is the finding at the center of this article.
② Only 4 of the 25 names are on any register that protects the name. Those 4 match one of the Japan Patent Office's 798 regional collective trademarks (Katsuura Tantanmen, No. 1; Yonezawa ramen, No. 2; Kasaoka ramen, No. 4; Wakayama ramen, No. 9), and 2 match one of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries' 1,259 entries in "Our Local Cuisine." 19 names sat at the lowest tier of "name protection," and Kitakata ramen, Sano Ramen, Hakata ramen, and Sapporo-style ramen are all among them.
③ Only 1 of the 25 names has a numeric requirement for how the noodle is made. Yonezawa ramen's cooperative sets a minimum water-to-flour ratio, and only noodles that meet the standard get the cooperative's seal. For the rest, the material goes only as far as a written requirement, or just a description of the noodle's character. The fact that only 1 name has this is itself the answer this axis gives.
④ Only 2 names had some form of published material on every one of the 6 measures. Katsuura Tantanmen and Kasaoka ramen. The No. 1 spot overall came from this group. What sits at the top is not "a name that stands out on 1 axis" but a name with some published material on every axis.
⑤ There is a name that sits at the top tier on origin while every one of the other 5 axes sits at the bottom tier. Tokyo-style ramen has both a year (Meiji 43) and a shop (a ramen shop in Asakusa) that published material can pinpoint, yet no definition, no bearer group, no serving-shop disclosure, no name protection, and no local-government treatment could be found for it, and it ranked 24th. 9 names sit at the top tier on origin, and of those, the ones for which neither a bearer group nor a published shop roster could be found are Hakata ramen, Onomichi ramen, and Tokyo-style ramen. A recorded history is not evidence that a name is being kept alive today. Seeing this one case is why "origin identification" was given the lightest weight of all, 12.
⑥ Only 2 lenses could be built. Weighting toward any 1 axis just brings back Katsuura Tantanmen, Yonezawa ramen, or Kitakata ramen into the No. 1 spot. Weighting toward "local-government involvement" does change the No. 1 spot, but the name it changes to is Yonezawa ramen, the same name that already reigns under "definitional clarity" — so it does not open up a different view.

How the Landscape Changes When You Change the Weights (Sub-Views)

Lens	No. 1	Biggest Movers	What It Measures
Overall balance (default)	Katsuura Tantanmen 8.30	0.34 ahead of Yonezawa ramen (2nd, 7.96) / followed by Kitakata ramen (3rd, 7.91)	Measures how a regional name is held up, balancing all six axes
Viewed with Definition first	Yonezawa ramen 9.02	Taiwan ramen moves 14th to 7th (5.56) / Nabeyaki ramen moves 11th to 6th (6.28)	Whether the requirements have been put into words
Viewed with Bearers first	Kitakata ramen 8.99	Asahikawa ramen moves 10th to 6th (7.64) / Tokushima ramen moves 16th to 12th (4.00)	An organization carrying the name, and its founding year

The 8 Names With No Bearer or Shop Disclosure Found

These are names that appear in the field's lists, yet for which neither a bearer group flying the name nor a published roster of shops carrying the name could be found. They are ranked, but the low rank means not "it scored worse when measured" but "nothing came up when it was looked into." The fact that well-known names line up here is itself part of what this article is trying to say. Yokohama ramen, in last place, sat at the bottom tier on all 6 measures.

There are 2 pairs in this table that land in a complete tie (Kyoto ramen and Sapporo-style ramen; Hiroshima ramen and Tokyo-style ramen). Names for which no publication turns up on either side cannot be told apart by this yardstick. It was decided not to bring in new material to break the tie, so the display order follows the name order, and the gap between the rank numbers carries no meaning.

Name	Listed	Lists it appears on	What is published / not published
Hakodate ramen No. 18 overall	2/5	the Ramen Museum / the Japanese Wikipedia	Not found: Bearer existence, Shop disclosure, Name protection. Published material was found for: Definitional clarity, Local-government involvement, Origin identification.[23]
Hakata ramen No. 19 overall	3/5	the Ramen Museum / the Japanese Wikipedia / the English Wikipedia	Not found: Bearer existence, Shop disclosure, Name protection. Published material was found for: Definitional clarity, Local-government involvement, Origin identification.[24]
Kyoto ramen No. 20 overall	2/5	the Ramen Museum / the Japanese Wikipedia	Not found: Bearer existence, Shop disclosure, Name protection. Published material was found for: Definitional clarity, Local-government involvement, Origin identification.[25]
Sapporo-style ramen No. 21 overall	3/5	the Ramen Museum / the Japanese Wikipedia / the English Wikipedia	Not found: Bearer existence, Shop disclosure, Name protection. Published material was found for: Definitional clarity, Local-government involvement, Origin identification.[26]
Onomichi ramen No. 22 overall	2/5	the Ramen Museum / the Japanese Wikipedia	Not found: Bearer existence, Shop disclosure, Name protection. Published material was found for: Definitional clarity, Local-government involvement, Origin identification.[27]
Hiroshima ramen No. 23 overall	2/5	the Ramen Museum / the Japanese Wikipedia	Not found: Bearer existence, Shop disclosure, Name protection, Origin identification. Published material was found for: Definitional clarity, Local-government involvement.[28]
Tokyo-style ramen No. 24 overall	3/5	the Ramen Museum / the Japanese Wikipedia / the English Wikipedia	Not found: Definitional clarity, Bearer existence, Shop disclosure, Name protection, Local-government involvement. Published material was found for: Origin identification.[29]
Yokohama ramen No. 25 overall	3/5	the Ramen Museum / the Japanese Wikipedia / the English Wikipedia	Not found: Definitional clarity, Bearer existence, Shop disclosure, Name protection, Local-government involvement, Origin identification.[30]

Debate and Limitations

Putting all 25 names into 1 table is, in itself, the single biggest editorial judgment in this article. The original design ranked only names for which either the bearer group or the serving shops could be confirmed as published, and left the remaining 8 unranked. Putting a rank number on something with no material to measure would make "we looked and it scored low" and "we looked and nothing came up" look the same — that is what the split was meant to avoid. In the end, ranking every name was the choice made instead, and the risk in doing so hasn't gone away. Yokohama ramen, in last place, is there not because it scored worse when measured by this yardstick, but because no publication turned up on any yardstick at all. That distinction doesn't show up in the rank number, so a table naming those 8 names sits later in this article, and each card says so too. What this asks of the reader is not to read a low rank as "bad" or "worthless."
There are 2 pairs that land in a complete tie (Kyoto ramen and Sapporo-style ramen; Hiroshima ramen and Tokyo-style ramen). Names for which no publication turns up on either side cannot be told apart by this yardstick. Kyoto ramen and Sapporo-style ramen go further still — every one of the 6 axis scores matches, so no weighting and no lens can split them. Breaking the tie would mean bringing in either the number of lists a name is listed on, or the year of origin, but the former becomes a stand-in for fame, and the latter swaps the axis from "can it be pinpointed" to "which is older." Neither was brought in, so the ties are shown as ties. The display order follows the name order, and the gap between the rank numbers carries no meaning.
19 of the names in the field come from a single museum's list. 19 of the 25 names trace back to the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum's "Local Ramen from Around the Country," so whatever that museum chose to include, and chose not to, becomes this article's field of view as-is. Even with the rule of appearing on 2 or more lists meant to keep out hand-picking, the rule loses its force if the layer of available lists itself is thin. An attempt was made to add the Agency for Cultural Affairs' "100-Year Food" list as a 6th list, but its official site could not be opened from this environment (it could not be reached even from a real browser), and this was abandoned.
2 axes were re-cut after looking at the material. Quietly fixing something can look like adjusting the result to fit, so it is written down here. "Shop disclosure" was originally designed to score "the number of shops on a roster," but an actual count could be made for only a handful of names, and the axis was turning into extra points for a bigger producing region. So it was changed to a tier based on "how strong the disclosure itself is," and the actual counts were moved into the card text instead. "Local-government involvement" originally had a set of tiers under which most of the 25 names landed at the top tier, leaving the axis with no power to tell names apart, so the tiers were rebuilt to fold in whether it is the local government itself, or only an affiliated body (a tourism association or tourism federation).
"Local-government involvement" was not widened to include "public institutions." Onomichi ramen appears on the Cabinet Office's Government Public Relations Online, so widening the axis would put points on Onomichi ramen. But that would mean moving the axis to manufacture a conclusion. The axis was left as "local government," and the national-government page was instead written up separately in the card text.
Only for Champon does the rule for counting serving shops land loosely. This name consists of nothing but a dish name and includes no place name. Because of that, when Nagasaki City groups shops under the dish-name category "champon and sara udon," that grouping lands, as-is, as this name's own shop list. For every other name, this article requires a list that flies the name itself, in the form "[place] ramen" — and in fact Sapporo-style ramen, Yokohama ramen, Hakodate ramen, and Yonezawa ramen are not counted this way, because their genre name goes no further than "ramen." Loosening the rule would let Sapporo-style ramen and Yokohama ramen in on the same logic and would collapse the backbone of this article, so the rule was left as it is, and disclosed here instead.
"Could not be read" is different from "was not there." For Tokushima ramen, the cooperative's founding year and member-shop count sit behind the paywall of the newspaper article that reported them, and could not be read (the cooperative's own official site cannot even be resolved by name from this environment right now). For Kasaoka ramen, the city's own page could not be read mechanically, along with the entire prefectural-office-branch site it sits on. For Onomichi ramen, the tourism association refused access even from a real browser. These blanks are blanks because the material could not be reached, not because no material exists.
How thick the published record is depends not only on how devoted a place is, but also on how much habit its offices and groups have of producing documents in the first place. This ranking has a side to it where it comes out as the order of "the local ramen with the most paperwork," not "good local ramen." The way the axes are tiered (local government itself or only an affiliated body; a roster or an approximate count) works to hold that bias down, but it cannot be fully separated out.
Taste was not measured. This ranking is not an order of deliciousness — it is an order of how well a name's status as "local" is backed by documentation.

Sources

Population source ①. The Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum's "Local Ramen from Around the Country" list. The 19 names on it were taken as the 1st of the five lists. The museum is a privately run theme park, and this article uses this list only to build the field and for the "origin" axis — it is not treated on the same footing as material from a local government or a group. https://www.raumen.co.jp/rapedia/study_japan/
Population source ②, and the material for the "name protection" axis. The Japan Patent Office's full set of registered regional collective trademarks (798 registrations; because some names are registered more than once, the number of unique trademark names after removing duplicates is 782). Rather than filtering to entries that contain the word "ramen," the full list of registered names was passed through and matched on the name-matching side (filtering would drop Katsuura Tantanmen and Sanma-men). https://www.jpo.go.jp/system/trademark/gaiyo/chidan/chiiki_team_list.html
Population source ③, and the material for the "name protection" axis. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries' registered dish names in "Our Local Cuisine" (all 47 prefectures, 1,259 entries). Only 2 names in this article's field match by name — Champon and Sanma-men — and the entry for that other region's registration contains no place name, just "ramen." https://www.maff.go.jp/j/keikaku/syokubunka/k_ryouri/
Population source ④. Standalone articles under the Japanese Wikipedia's Category:Local Ramen (174 entries). The category was traced recursively through the MediaWiki API. **Wikipedia was used as a lead, not a source** — every axis score was still worked out by going down to published material from a group or a local government. https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/api.php
Population source ⑤. The boldfaced entries in the Regional variations section of the English Wikipedia's Ramen article (8 entries). Because a boldfaced term is sometimes a place name, the 1 case where this was mapped to the style the body text actually names (Nagoya → Taiwan ramen) was kept, together with the reasoning, in the derivation table. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramen
The material used to score Katsuura Tantanmen is the Katsuura Tantanmen commercial cooperative; the city's tourism association (a general incorporated association); the prefecture's official tourism site; the official online shop supervised by the Katsuura Tantanmen commercial cooperative; and the city's tourism association (a general incorporated association). Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://katsutan.jp/ https://maruchiba.jp/gourmet/feature/detail_148.html https://shop.katsuura-tantanmen.com/pages/locations https://www.katsuura-kankou.net/eat/ https://info.gbiz.go.jp/hojin/ichiran?hojinBango=7040005016683
The material used to score Yonezawa ramen is the city (Planning and Coordination Department, Attractiveness Promotion Section); the Yonezawa ramen cooperative. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.city.yonezawa.yamagata.jp/promotion/gourmet/others/9255.html https://yonezawa-ramen.org/yonezawa-gomenkai/ https://yonezawa-ramen.org/yonezawa-ramen/ https://yonezawa-ramen.org/member/
The material used to score Kitakata ramen is the city (Commerce and Tourism Section); the Kitakata ramen cooperative. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.city.kitakata.fukushima.jp/soshiki/syoukan/823.html http://www.ramenkai.com/ http://www.ramenkai.com/about/ http://www.ramenkai.com/list/ http://www.ramenkai.com/association/
The material used to score Kasaoka ramen is the "Ramen Town Kasaoka" nationwide-outreach project promotion committee (based at the local chamber of commerce); the city's tourism association (a general incorporated association); the local chamber of commerce; the national industrial-property information institute (an agency under the Japan Patent Office). Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. http://www.kasaoka-ramen.jp/ https://www.kasaoka-kankou.jp/ramen https://kasaokacci.jp/news/%E3%80%8C%E7%AC%A0%E5%B2%A1%E3%83%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A1%E3%83%B3%E3%80%8D%E5%9C%B0%E5%9F%9F%E5%9B%A3%E4%BD%93%E5%95%86%E6%A8%99%E3%82%AB%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89%EF%BC%88%E5%9C%B0%E5%9B%A3%E3%82%AB%E3%83%BC/ https://www.inpit.go.jp/chidan/chidan-card/6181945.html https://ab.jcci.or.jp/article/125990/ https://www.kasaoka-kankou.jp/news/10031
The material used to score Champon is the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries; the nationwide local-Champon liaison council; Nagasaki City; Nagasaki City (the copyright notice at the foot of the site reads Copyright(C) NAGASAKI CITY). Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.maff.go.jp/j/keikaku/syokubunka/k_ryouri/search_menu/area/nagasaki.html https://www.maff.go.jp/j/keikaku/syokubunka/k_ryouri/search_menu/menu/46_8_nagasaki.html https://www.facebook.com/welovechampong/ https://www.city.nagasaki.lg.jp/nagazine/hakken0310/index.html https://www.at-nagasaki.jp/gourmet/wp-content/themes/bloom_tcd053-child/data.js
The material used to score Sanma-men is the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries; the prefectural Sanma-men association (housed at the prefecture's Chinese-restaurant trade association); the prefecture's Chinese-restaurant trade association; the prefectural Sanma-men association. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.maff.go.jp/j/keikaku/syokubunka/k_ryouri/search_menu/area/kanagawa.html https://www.maff.go.jp/j/keikaku/syokubunka/k_ryouri/search_menu/menu/35_16_kanagawa.html https://sannma-men.com/ https://sannma-men.com/union-overview.html https://sannma-men.com/company-list.html https://sannma-men.com/origin.html https://sannma-men.com/yokohama-south.html https://sannma-men.com/yokohama-north.html https://sannma-men.com/kawasaki-east.html https://sannma-men.com/kawasaki-west.html https://sannma-men.com/yokosuka-syonan.html https://sannma-men.com/kanagawa-nw.html
The material used to score Sano Ramen is the city (General Policy Department, Public Relations and Brand Promotion Section); the Sano Ramen society. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.city.sano.lg.jp/soshikiichiran/sougou/toshibrandsuishin/gyomuannai/koho/meibutsu/5152.html https://sanoramenkai.jp/ https://sanoramenkai.jp/category/center/ https://sanoramenkai.jp/category/east/ https://sanoramenkai.jp/category/north/ https://sanoramenkai.jp/category/south/ https://sanoramenkai.jp/category/west/ https://sanoramenkai.jp/category/east/page/2/ https://sanoramenkai.jp/category/south/page/2/ https://sanoramenkai.jp/category/west/page/2/
The material used to score Kurume ramen is the city's tourism, convention, and international-exchange association (a public-interest incorporated foundation); the same association (its copyright notice also gives "Kurume City" in English). Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://welcome-kurume.com/fruits/knows/detail/ee641f75-838c-4610-9844-5faabd16099b https://welcome-kurume.com/enjoys/gourmet/foods_01.html https://welcome-kurume.com/enjoys/gourmet/search/?genre_id%5B%5D=g20
The material used to score Wakayama ramen is the prefecture's official tourism site (run by the prefecture's tourism federation, a public-interest incorporated association); the national federation of noodle-makers' cooperatives. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.wakayama-kanko.or.jp/features/detail_616.html https://zenmenren.or.jp/about/officer.html
The material used to score Asahikawa ramen is the city (Tourism, Sports and City Promotion Department, Tourism and Promotion Section); the Asahikawa Ramen Village facility (its operating body); the Ramen Society of Asahikawa. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.city.asahikawa.hokkaido.jp/kankou/2100/d000000a.html http://www.ramenmura.com/ https://ramennokai-asahikawa.com/ https://ramennokai-asahikawa.com/ichiran.php https://ramennokai-asahikawa.com/gaiyo.php
The material used to score Nabeyaki ramen is the city (Culture, Sports and Tourism Section); the city's tourism association. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.city.susaki.lg.jp/life/detail.php?hdnKey=177 https://www.city.susaki.lg.jp/life/detail.php?hdnKey=178 https://www.city.susaki.lg.jp/life/detail.php?hdnKey=176 https://sta2020.com/susaki_gourmet/nabeyaki_ra-men/
The material used to score Kumamoto ramen is the Kumamoto Prefecture Tourist Federation; Kumamoto City (Kumamoto City Tourism Guide / Tourism Policy Section); Kumamoto City (Kumamoto City Tourism Guide). Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://kumamoto.guide/brand/foods/foods_01.html https://kumamoto-guide.jp/spots/detail/258 https://kumamoto.guide/look/detail/22 https://kumamoto-guide.jp/ramen_navi/search
The material used to score Takayama ramen is the prefecture's official tourism site (its travel-guide feature); the official regional travel guide covering the Takayama ramen area (a .or.jp site run by the local tourism-association family of sites). Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.kankou-gifu.jp/blog/detail_224.html https://www.hidatakayama.or.jp/special/detail_467.html
The material used to score Taiwan ramen is the city's tourism information, its "City Concierge" site; nippon.com (a general incorporated foundation); the city's local-cuisine promotion council. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.nagoya-info.jp/gourmet/digest/ https://www.nippon.com/ja/japan-topics/c09803/ https://nagoya-meshi.jp/cms/wp-content/themes/nagoyameshi/nagoyameshi/item10.html https://nagoya-meshi.jp/cms/
The material used to score Kagoshima ramen is the prefecture's tourism federation (a public-interest incorporated association); the city's tourism, convention, and international-exchange association (a public-interest incorporated foundation). Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.kagoshima-kankou.com/gourmet/noodles/top https://www.kagoshima-yokanavi.jp/article/ramennoodle2 https://www.kagoshima-yokanavi.jp/gourmet?rtc%5B%5D=24&rtd=&q=&lat=&lng=&st=&vw=tile
The material used to score Tokushima ramen is the prefecture's official tourism information site; the city (Livelihood and Exchange Section) — also the city's official tourism site, whose title reads "Fun! Fun! Tokushima"; the prefecture's ramen-business cooperative; the local newspaper publisher. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.awanavi.jp/archives/topics/65670 https://funfun-tokushima.jp/enjoy/special/rahmen/ https://www.tokushima-ramen.or.jp/ https://www.topics.or.jp/articles/-/1309008
The material used to score Shirakawa ramen is the city (Tourism Section); the prefecture's southern-area tourism promotion council (its Shirakawa-area guide site); the city's tourism and local-products association (a public-interest incorporated foundation, organizer). Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.city.shirakawa.fukushima.jp/page/page001508.html https://shirakawa-area-navi.jp/highlight.php?mode=detail&code=115 https://sjjc.jp/ramenstamp/shoplist
The material used to score Hakodate ramen is the city's official tourism information site (run by the city); the city's noodle-restaurant trade association. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.hakobura.jp/features/27 https://www.hakomenin.com/
The material used to score Hakata ramen is the Fukuoka Prefecture Tourism Association. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.crossroadfukuoka.jp/feature/noodles
The material used to score Kyoto ramen is the city's tourism association (a public-interest incorporated association, its tourism-guide site). Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://plus.kyoto.travel/entry/food-culture-ramen
The material used to score Sapporo-style ramen is the city's tourism association (supervised by the region's noodle-makers' cooperative); the region's heritage-initiative promotion council (inquiries handled by the region's noodle-makers' cooperative). Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.sapporo.travel/sp/sapporo-ramen/ http://www.hokkaidoisan.org/hokkaido_ramen.html
The material used to score Onomichi ramen is the Cabinet Office's Government Public Relations Online (HIGHLIGHTING Japan); the city. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.gov-online.go.jp/hlj/ja/november_2024/november_2024-03.html https://www.city.onomichi.hiroshima.jp/soshiki/25/28926.html https://www.city.onomichi.hiroshima.jp/site/onohug/14309.html
The material used to score Hiroshima ramen is the city (Economic and Tourism Affairs Bureau, Industrial Promotion Department, Regional Industry Promotion Section), its list of certified specialty products under "The Hiroshima Brand." Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.city.hiroshima.lg.jp/hiroshima-brand/tokusan/1026502/1026504/1014737.html
The material used to score Tokyo-style ramen is the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. Every phrase shown in quotation marks in the body card is a verbatim quotation from these pages, machine-checked to confirm it appears in the body text of the source page. https://www.raumen.co.jp/shop/rairaiken.html
The material for Yokohama ramen. **Not even 1 piece of published material that names this name directly could be obtained.** Where the search looked, and why nothing was found, is recorded in derivation/facts/.

The Local Ramen Ranking— All 25 Names Ranked, and the 8 With No Bearer or Shop Disclosure Found