Plot

An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a râmen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.

Abby, four years out of college, an aimless child of privilege, comes to Tokyo to be with her boyfriend, who promptly leaves for Osaka. She wants to stay in Tokyo in hopes he'll come back to her, but she's miserable: she speaks little Japanese and has a dull job as a law-firm gopher. She stumbles into the neighborhood ramen shop operated by the aging master chef Maezumi and his wife Reiko. His soup cheers Abby, so she decides to apprentice herself to him. He's uninterested, she's insistent, so he shouts at her and gives her all the cleaning to do. Weeks go by; she's persistent. Will he ever actually teach her to cook? And if he does, will she bring the requisite spirit to the job?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>

Having invested everything in love, sad-eyed American Abby finds herself like a fish out of water in bustling Tokyo, Japan. Disheartened, Abby seeks solace in a local ramen shop and meets her future teacher, the inspired but tyrannical Chef Maezumi. As Abby struggles to find her feet in a land where tradition rules, she has an epiphany: why not learn how to make ramen, Japan's number one comfort food? However, the teacher and apprentice are both lost in translation. But has Abby found her calling as a ramen chef? Does she have what it takes to unlock the culinary master's secret and find the crucial missing ingredient?—Nick Riganas