Hacker News Reader

There are ramen restaurants in cities with larger Asian populations like NYC and Los Angeles. To most Americans, however, ramen refers to the $0.50/meal packs of instant noodles.

The US of A has a greater capacity to produce grains needed to produce the noodles, and can deliver them to market without having to put them on a boat. Japan has less arable land, so less grain producing land, and (probably) has to import more (which requires boats).

> The US of A has a greater capacity to produce grains needed to produce the noodles

And more importantly, a greater capacity to subsdize production of said grains.

Edit: Did this comment really get greyed out? The mechanism for that is still kind of mysterious to me. Let me clarify, I don't mean the US has more money, just a dumber system of farm subsidies.

American Ramen 22 cents a meal: http://www.amazon.com/Maruchan-Ramen-Chili-3-Ounce-Packages/...

Ramen in the US refers to instant dried noodles that come with a packet of bouillon, not with the labour-intensive-but-awesome real article.