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From wikipedia:

> In North America, Japanese instant noodles were imported starting in the 1970s bearing the name "ramen", causing the term "ramen" to be often used in North America to refer to instant noodles.

So there you go. I'm sure it will disappear in time, as awareness of asian cuisine develops.

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And this is hackernews, where all the readers must be from North America? I doubt the poster is even in San Francisco, where there are lots of decent ramen restaraunts to be found. On that same wiki page, there is nary a pic to be found of instant noodles.

Well, yes, it is an english speaking website, so I imagine the colloquial usage of 'ramen' probably refers to whatever the colloquial US usage of 'ramen' is.

Not sure why you're making such a big deal about it. Misuse of loan words is common in many languages, not least Japanese. Why, not 3 hours ago I was talking to someone who is about to rent a マンション (mansion) in Tokyo. Needless to say it is not any kind of mansion an english speaker would recognise, and I didn't see any pictures of same on the japanese wikipedia page. [1]

It happens. It will probably happen less now the world's so interconnected. Not worth four comments in a row!

[1] For the uninitiated, in japan a "mansion" basically refers to an apartment in a building built to a certain quality.

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