Oshu Koriyama Tonkotsu Ramen

A cloudy white pork-bone broth carries thin, straight noodles. It shares the same backbone as Kyushu's tonkotsu ramen, though shops here are said to tune down the funk for an easier-to-eat bowl. Char siu, red pickled ginger, and chopped scallion — toppings familiar from Kyushu tonkotsu — fill out the bowl. A cloudy white broth entirely unlike Kitakata's clear soy or Koriyama Black's dark soy, both from the same Fukushima, gives Koriyama a second face.

Simmering pork bones for hours into a thick, cloudy white broth is a process carried straight over from Kurume's method. Shop owners who took the idea on are said to have traveled to Kurume itself to learn the technique, then refit it into their own bowl to suit local water and taste. Amid the nationwide boom in local ramen styles, the choice of pork bone — brought in with its actual method attached — came out of a push to give Koriyama a second identity of its own.

At the core of why pork bone was chosen is that Koriyama City and Kurume City in Fukuoka are sister cities. Trace it back further and it runs deeper still: among the settlers who moved from Kyushu during the Meiji-era Asaka wilderness reclamation were many from the former Kurume domain, close enough a tie that a 'Kurume-chō' neighborhood name survives in Koriyama today. When the city set out to build 'another Fukushima ramen' alongside soy-based Kitakata and Koriyama Black, reaching for Kurume's tonkotsu, with its historical tie already in place, was a natural direction to take.