Picture this, It’s -25 degrees outside, it’s been snowing all day and your feet are killing you from being in your shoes all day. It’s late at night and you’re just getting comfortable in your coach waiting for your favorite TV show to start. All is missing is your comfort food, a slice of pizza or a cup of hot coco and a big cookie.

Those all sound alright, comforting, warm and familiar but a bit boring. How about breaking that comfort shell a little and trying something new, how about a bowl of Japanese Ramen.

You don’t need to have a degree to figure out what’s in this bowl, soup, noodle, some sort of meat and veggies. There are different variations of this dish, but they all have the same basic ingredients. Some Ramen variations depending on who’s making it are more bland (Japanese version) and some of them got some kick to them (Korean version). It’s interesting how people can get turned off so easily by this dish even though they would probably devour each individual ingredient in under a minute. What is it about a foreign food that makes us go, no thank you.

There are a lot of misconceptions about ethnic foods. Take Japanese food, they have a lot of raw fish in their cuisines. Don’t be fooled by this common misconception, just because one of their food has it doesn’t mean they all have raw fish in them. Let’s be logical, soup is warm so it’s cooked. Noodles are soft and “slurpy”, cooked. Beef is and lightly fried, COOKED. There’s so much more to the Japanese cuisine than your typical white washed California sushi rolls. Now everybody loves California rolls and can pop 6 of those bad boys in 2 seconds, but back in the day when the rolls came to the western world not too many people would venture out of their comfort zone to give them a try.

So be brave and give Ramen a chance, whats the worse that can happen beside gaining two important lessons. Realizing you can add another food to your list of foods you like and knowing that the Japanese are not just about raw fish!