“The Japanese are sentimental about their noodle soup – it’s the working-class food that nourished the nation in the bleak days after World War Two. Ramen chefs are TV celebs, in a country that devotes more broadcast time to cookery than even we do. I asked the young pilgrims just what they valued above all in ramen. They sniffed the tangy air, Bisto-kid style: ‘The basis of the experience is the broth,’ was the consensus. In the great Japanese cod-Western Tampopo – the only movie to take noodle soup, sex and death with equal seriousness – a ramen guru announces that the key to Japan’s national dish is that ‘the soup must animate the noodles‘.”