Onomichi ramen: what it is, where it is from and what a bowl costs

From

Onomichi, Hiroshima

Soup

soy sauce with chicken broth and small-fish stock, floating pork back fat

Noodles

flat, firm

Also

simple toppings of chashu, menma and scallions

Checked

18 October 2026, the Hiroshima Tourism Association

• Hiroshima's tourism association says Onomichi ramen is a soy-sauce soup enriched with pork back fat, with chicken broth plus a seafood (sardine) stock.
• Flat, firm noodles are the mainstream.
• A plain bowl with mild chashu, menma and scallions.
• JNTO also describes a soy-sauce base made with chicken bones and small Seto Inland Sea fish, with floating chunks of back fat, served very hot.

The government's retail price survey records the price of a bowl of chuka soba (ramen) at ordinary shops every month in 81 cities. In August 2026 it was 879 yen in Hiroshima City (capital of Hiroshima), 6 of 81 from the highest. Tokyo's 23 wards were 620 yen, 73 of 81, so ramen in Tokyo is not more expensive than in most cities. This is an average of the shops in the survey, not the price at a famous shop.

The survey does not cover Onomichi, so this is the price in Hiroshima's capital, Hiroshima City.

Spending on eating out at ramen shops

7,941 yen a year per household in Hiroshima City (2023–2025 average; 31 of 52 cities; Japan 8,752 yen)

Ramen shops

422 in Hiroshima in 2016, 14.9 per 100,000 people (23 of 47; Japan 14.3)

Spending is from the household survey of two-or-more-person households in 52 large cities, so it is the city's number, not the prefecture's. Ramen shops are the 2016 Economic Census count of businesses classified as ramen shops; some ramen shops are counted with Chinese restaurants, so the real number is higher. Per-person numbers divide by the 2016 population (our calculation).