Fortune-telling ramen: Nissin creates clever use for instant noodle drain holes

The most delicious omikuji you’ve ever seen!

As the company that gave the world instant noodles, Nissin is always looking for new ways to keep pushing the envelope, or should we say, the ramen bowl, and now they’ve done just that by turning the company’s Yakisoba UFO cup into a fortune-telling vessel.

The team shared their clever invention with a tweet on the official UFO Twitter account, which read: “We took advantage of the fact that noodles poke out when draining the hot water by testing it out as an omikuji.”

湯切りで麺がちょびっと出ることを利用して
おみくじにしてみました pic.twitter.com/wKqTPZj8Wh

— 日清焼そばU.F.O.公式 (@nissin_u_f_o) January 25, 2024

As the above tweet shows, the omikuji — a Japanese form of fortune telling where a box is shaken to release a stick that tells your fortune — works by using noodles instead of sticks, with different fortunes printed above the holes.

▼ An example of an omikuji box at a Japanese shrine.

While some omikuji, like the one above, involves a stick with a number on it that correlates to a fortune, Nissin’s ramen omikuji has the fortunes printed above the drainage holes. Whichever hole the noodle pokes out of predicts your fortune, and in Nissin’s tweet, that hole reads, “末吉” (“suekichi”), meaning “future good fortune“.

Other fortunes printed above the holes are in line with the ones generally used on omikuji at Japanese shrines and temples:

• 大吉 (daikichi) great good fortune
• 吉 (kichi) good fortune
• 小吉 (shoukichi) small good fortune
• 中吉 (chuukichi) medium good fortune
• 末吉 (suekichi) future good fortune
• 末小吉 (sueshoukichi) future small good fortune
• 凶 (kyou) misfortune
• 大凶 (daikyou) great misfortune

The idea for fortune-telling by noodles was such a clever one that it garnered over 25 million views in a few short days, with people leaving comments like:

“This is genius — I definitely want to try this!”
“As expected of Nissin, they do things we can’t even imagine! I’m so impressed.”
“If they sold this, I’d buy it immediately.”
“So innovative.”
“It’s great to have a company where playfulness is an important part of product development.“

Nissin really has outdone themselves with this new concept, and we now have our fingers crossed that the “future good fortune” indicated in the photo is a hint that the product might soon be appearing in stores. We won’t put it past them, given that this is a company who once sold their Cup Noodles with cat ears on the lids!

Source: Twitter/@nissin_u_f_o via Hachima Kikou
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