Here you are, sitting in a Japanese ramen shop about to eat what you think will be the most delicious ramen ever. No more will you have to rely on ramen space food to make you feel like you're in Japan, you're living it! This is exactly what you've been waiting for all of these years. But, as you're waiting patiently for your ramen to be served, you have noisy neighbors whom are slurping the life out of the ramen. Perhaps it's their age? After all, you've seen it from time to time were people just don't seem to know their manners. But then you finally get your ramen and you eat it quietly. There's an eerie feeling that shrouds you but what is this feeling?It's a feeling of being shunned and as a foreigner eating ramen quietly is a bad sign such as the food isn't delicious. The custom in Japan is that you must slurp your ramen and the louder it is, the more delicious it is. Of course, it's one thing to know about this and it's a whole other thing to pull it off. Rather, slurping is more like an art form. Slurp too hard and you'll begin to choke. Slurp too little and it's just not going to work. If you slurp in a weird manner, it won't sound like you're enjoying it but rather forcing yourself. If you're anything like me, just hearing others slurp makes you want to gag and possibly lose your appetite. My wife slurps, my father-in-law, and mother-in-law slurps, heck the whole family on that side slurps and after a year of being surrounded by slurping I'm still not used to it and I easily lose my appetite. Well, according to my wife just now, I also slurp but I don't notice it. This is news to me!But what's the deal with slurping anyhow? Most of the western world was raised to not slurp and often times were punished for slurping. Well, traditionally the idea was that the food tasted better while slurping, rather it enhances the taste. Ask any Japanese and they will say that hearing a good slurp will make you want to eat some ramen. But, how true is this? If we look at wine connoisseur, we notice that they do it too in their own way to enhance the flavors and I'm pretty certain they have their very expensive hobby down to a science. According to various taste panels in Japan, slurping supposedly enhances the taste as well and many passbyers will judge the quality of the ramen by the sound of the slurp. I couldn't find any source that were reliable enough to link to but that's what I got from Google when searching for the science behind Japanese slurping.So before you go to Japan and try a ramen shop, I would highly recommend that you practice with top-ramen first and learn how to slurp because you may unintentionally insult the chef and keep hungry people away if you're eating in a stall. Thank you Mighty June for letting me use your image for this article.

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