Osaka restaurateur sends ramen ingredients into space for six months to test effects of cosmic rays

Founder hopes to expand to Mars when feasible.

Space: the final frontier… of ramen.

On 10 November, a brave crew of ramen ingredients and their companions blasted off from Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. This marked the beginning of their six-month mission to absorb the very essence of being in space and bring it back to share with the world.

This project to explore new worlds of ramen is the work of restaurateur Takahiro Matsumura and his group of ramen establishments under the umbrella of Unchi Co., Ltd., which literally translates to “Poop Co., Ltd.”

▼ It’s a name you can trust.

Most famous for Human Beings Everybody Noodles restaurant in Osaka, Matsumura and Unichi have spearheaded a number of ambitious ramen-themed projects.

▼ Human Beings Everybody Noodles pictured at the end of this very long line

However, none of the projects have been nearly as ambitious as this. Aboard the Falcon 9 rocket bound for the International Space Station are some pieces of roasted pork, soup stock, noodles, green onion, and fermented bamboo shoots. Once these items arrive they will undergo testing to see the effects of cosmic rays on them.

The exact nature of the testing is unclear but there is a reference to a “spacewalk” in their announcement which would suggest the food will be kept outside of the space station and thus exposed to cosmic radiation for a period of about six months.

Aside from learning the effects, Unchi also plans on crafting a Meteorite Ramen Bowl by sending a certain amount of Japanese soil suited for making ceramics. This will also be exposed to comic rays and then returned to Earth, where it will be forged into a space bowl.

By now you might be asking yourselves why Matsumura might do such a thing. Fortunately, the Unchi Space Program has been laid out as follows.

Step 1
Send Japanese soil into space and craft a Meteorite Raman Bowl with the soil that returns.

Step 2
Study the effects of six months worth of cosmic rays on ramen ingredients with an aim for Unchi to establish the first ramen restaurant on Mars.

Step 3
Promote Unchi as an iconic Osakan ramen restaurant group, with an aim to have a location inside the Osaka-Kansai World Expo 2025 venue.

In preparation for Step 3, Unchi also sent some signs with the company logo up to space to display at the Expo. It’s a bit presumptuous seeing as they still haven’t been invited to join the rapidly approaching event, but I suppose it’s better to have the signs and not need them than the other way around. Matsumura is hoping the Meteorite Ramen Bowl will help sweeten the deal since a Moon rock was a major draw at the 1970 Expo in Osaka.

This all might seem ridiculously ambitious for a ramen restaurant, but its founder does seem to be a very focused individual. Matsumura first decided to open a ramen restaurant when he was 10 and realized that dream by the time he was 24. He has since gone on to do some impressive things like open a variety of restaurants around the world, and even travel to Ukraine in the middle of the Russian invasion to hand out cups of instant ramen.

So he certainly seems like the kind of guy that sees things through and may very well become the first ramen restaurant owner on Mars someday.

Source, images: PR Times
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