Imabari Ramen: The Clear Shio Ramen Made From the Kurushima Strait (and Where It Stands in 2026)
Most of Japan’s regional ramen is a competition in richness.
Imabari went the other way.
Imabari ramen is a clear shio ramen, light enough to see the bottom of the bowl through, built from small fish caught in the strait you cross on the Kurushima Kaikyo Bridge.
It is also, honestly, harder to find than you would expect for something with an official definition and a website.
This guide covers what it is, why it is worth seeking out, and what we can and cannot confirm about where to eat it in 2026.
The ordering tablet at Mitsuya, photographed a few years ago.
What Imabari ramen actually is
According to the official Imabari Ramen site, the style is defined by its ingredients rather than by a recipe.
The broth is made from small fish alone: sea bream, iriko sardines and eso lizardfish from the Kurushima Strait.
The salt is Hakata no Shio, produced on Hakata Island, which is one of the islands you ride through on the Shimanami Kaido.
The seasoning includes ginjo sake from Yamatan Masamune, brewed in Imabari by a house founded in 1831.
The noodles are thin, curly and high in water content, chosen to hold a light broth rather than a heavy one.
The toppings are where it stops being an ordinary bowl.
There is sumaki, a local fish-cake speciality, chashu made from Iyo jidori chicken, nori seaweed from the Kurushima Strait, and a slice of island lemon.
What it is actually like to eat
The lemon is the part that catches people out.
The broth is light and clear, and the sourness of the lemon runs right through it and lifts the whole bowl.
It works when you are tired, which on this coast means after a long day in the saddle.
It also works late, as the bowl you have after drinking, which is the job Japan usually hands to ramen.
It is light enough that the noodles are gone before you notice.
That puts it closer to an afternoon snack than to a meal you have to plan the rest of the day around.
If you are arriving with a fixed idea of what ramen is, put it down at the door.
This is nearer to the old-fashioned chuka soba, the plain Chinese-style noodle soup Japan ate before ramen turned into a contest of richness.
Why a cyclist should care
Regional food is usually a story you have to take on trust.
This one you can see from the saddle.
The salt comes from Hakata Island, which you pass between Omishima and Oshima.
The fish and the nori come from the Kurushima Strait, which is the water under the bridge on your first morning out of Imabari.
The lemon comes from the same islands you have been riding past all day.
Eating a bowl at the end of the ride is closer to reading the map back to yourself than to having lunch.
The honest part: it is quieter than it was
Imabari ramen is not a long tradition with an unbroken line.
It is a rescue.
The old Imabari chuka soba, the everyday seafood noodle soup of the town, had nearly died out as national ramen trends arrived, and the definition was written down to keep the style from disappearing entirely.
That effort had momentum for a while, including a stamp rally with towel prizes, which is about as Imabari as a promotion can get.
The style was taken out to ramen expos as well, and that is a good part of how the name travelled beyond the town.
The push behind the name is quieter now.
The official site’s most recent news post is from 2023, and its shop list now names three: Kokinya, Mitsuya and Ryu-e.
The useful thing to know is that not one of the three is an Imabari ramen shop as such.
Each of them is something else first, and serves this bowl alongside its own main trade.
That is most of the explanation for why a style with an official definition is still hard to find in the town that defined it.
One name you will still find on older lists is Menya Takeyoshi, which now runs as a tsukemen specialist, serving noodles you dip into a concentrated broth rather than a bowl of soup.
Tsukemen at Menya Takeyoshi, photographed a few years ago.
So please treat any list, including this one, as a starting point rather than a guarantee.
Ramen shops change their menus, and a defined regional style is exactly the sort of thing that comes and goes from a board.
Ask when you arrive, or have your accommodation call ahead.
The three shops, and what each one really is
Kokinya has been making noodles since 1912, and it is an udon house first.
The dough is worked after you order rather than prepared in advance, and Imabari ramen sits on the menu of a shop whose main trade is a completely different bowl.
Mitsuya is a Kurume tonkotsu shop, serving the cloudy pork-bone ramen of Kyushu, which is the far end of the scale from a clear fish broth.
By local account it was Mitsuya that led the effort to bring the old Imabari seafood style back, so this is where the revival started.
That is history rather than a promise about today’s menu.
Ask when you sit down, and be ready for the tonkotsu to be the answer.
The noodles here are boiled two portions at a time rather than in bulk, so a full shop means a wait, and lunchtime is generally a shorter wait than the evening.
You can choose your noodle firmness, and refills of noodles are available, in the Kyushu manner.
The printed menu at Mitsuya, photographed a few years ago, so read the prices on it as history rather than as today’s board.
Ryu-e is built on soy-sauce ramen and chicken paitan, and it serves Imabari ramen on Fridays only, in limited numbers.
That comes from the shop’s own website, which makes it the one piece of timing on this page we can give you with confidence.
It is also the one of the three that is not in the town centre, having moved out to Higashimura in 2023.
Ordering, and the order to eat it in
At Mitsuya you order from a tablet at the table, and the same screen sets out the order in which to approach the bowl.
It is worth following.
Drink a mouthful of the broth first, before you add anything, and taste it as the kitchen sent it out.
Then squeeze the lemon in a little at a time, tasting as you go, so that you feel the soup change rather than change it all at once.
Last, stir in a small amount of yuzu kosho, the citrus and chilli paste, for a third version of the same bowl.
The screen in the photograph above carries a line in English as well.
That tells you something about who this shop expects to walk through the door, which is a useful thing to know before you push it open.
Ordering from a screen is worth knowing about on its own.
A tablet is an easier thing to point at than a spoken order across a counter, which lowers the bar for anyone arriving without Japanese.
Where the shops are
Kokinya and Mitsuya are both in the central part of Imabari, within roughly one to two kilometres of JR Imabari Station.
That is a walk of ten to twenty minutes, or a few minutes on a rental bicycle, and it means a bowl fits easily into the end of a riding day.
Ryu-e is further out, about 4.5 kilometres south-east of the station, or twenty minutes by bicycle.
Addresses and telephone numbers for all three are in the Japanese original linked at the foot of this page.
We are deliberately not printing opening hours here, because our sources for them disagree and some date from 2019.
Search the shop name on a map application when you are in town, and you will get something more current than any list we could write.
Questions visitors ask
Is Imabari ramen spicy or heavy? Neither.
It is a light, clear salt-based soup, closer to a good fish stock than to a typical ramen.
Is there lemon in it? Yes, island lemon is part of the defined style.
Can I be sure a shop is serving it today? Only at Ryu-e, and only on a Friday.
At the other two, ask when you sit down, because the lists available online are several years old.
What if I cannot find it? Imabari has plenty of other noodles, and the alternatives below are all confirmed and open.
Is it related to Hakata ramen? No.
Hakata and Kurume ramen are the rich pork-bone style from Kyushu, which is the opposite end of the scale.
If you would rather have a sure thing
For the opposite experience, the back-fat ramen at Honebuto Mikaku is thick, loud and generous, and the toppings are free.
For handmade udon near the port, there is Matsu Seimenjo.
For soba, and the Nagoya-style kishimen that a third-generation owner makes in a quiet corner of town, there is Soba Masa.
And Imabari’s most famous dish is not a noodle at all: the three classic shops for it are compared in the yakibuta tamago meshi guide.
Everything else on the Imabari side is gathered in the Imabari guide for Shimanami cyclists.
The definition above is as published by the official Imabari Ramen site, whose most recent update dates from 2023.
Shop information changes, so please confirm locally before making a special trip.
Original article in Japanese: 今治ラーメン
