Chiba noodle joint finds plenty of fans willing to take it up on the offer.

How much money do you think you’ll spend at your favorite ramen restaurant chain in your lifetime? If it’s over 300,000 yen (US$2000), then the deal offered by Chiba Prefecture’s Uramusashiya makes a lot of sense.

Uramusashiya’s original branch is located near Nishi Chiba Station in Chiba City, and it just opened a second restaurant close to Soga Station, also in Chiba City. Their specialty is a rich soy sauce/chicken stock broth, and for those who truly love it, Uramusashiya sent out an announcement through the restaurant’s official Twitter account that they were offering lifetime passes, priced at 300,000 yen.

The passes are valid at either Uramusashiya location, and get you a free bowl of noodles on each visit to the restaurant, in perpetuity.

▼ Uramusashi’s surprisingly rocking promotional video

So the question becomes where’s the break-even point on this ramen-related investment? Looking at Uramusashiya’s menu, their basic ramen is priced at 800 yen, so you’d have to eat 375 bowls of it to get your money’s worth.

However, the lifetime pass announcement says that you can also select more expensive chashu and limited-time ramen varieties too. The menu lists three kinds of chashu ramen, two at 1,150 yen, and one at 1,350 yen. Assuming the 1,350-yen is eligible, that would mean you only need to eat 223 bowls of ramen to make the lifetime pass a worthwhile use of your money, but there’s more. In addition to ramen, the lifetime pass is also good for side orders of rice, which ordinarily cost 100 yen, so if you’re ordering the premium chashu ramen and a side of rice each time, you only need to have 207 such meals to start coming out ahead.

That doesn’t mean that it would take at least 207 days to break even, though, because Uramusashiya is good for multiple visits on the same day. The restaurant opens at 11 a.m. and closes at midnight during the week and at 10 p.m. on weekends and holidays, so assuming you’re OK with a late breakfast, the 300,000-yen pass could ostensibly cover all of your meal expenses for the rest of your life, barring Tuesdays, when the restaurant is closed.

Uramusashiya didn’t say how many lifetime passes it was issuing, and explained that they’d be first offered to customers who are already regulars at the restaurant. Whatever number were available, they were all snatched up within two days, proving that there are people who indeed feel like pre-purchasing a life’s worth of ramen meals is a sound decision. This wasn’t the first time for Uramusashi to offer lifetime passes, though, as they’ve previously sold 100,000-yen unlimited ramen passes for students only, so maybe we’ll see this sort of deal from them again in the future.

Restaurant information
Uramusashiya (Nishi Chiba branch)/ 裏武蔵家 (西千葉店)
Address: Chiba-ken, Chiba-shi, Chuo-ku 2-19-9
千葉県千葉市中央区春日２丁目１９−９
Open 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5 p.m.-midnight (weekdays), 11 a.m.-4 p.m., 5 p.m.-10 p.m. (weekends, holidays)
Website

Source: Twitter/@musashiya_cb via Hachima Kiko
Images: YouTube/裏武蔵家　URAMUSA
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!