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Women In Japan Give Men Chocolate Ramen For Valentine's Day And We Tried Some

WOULD NOT RECOMMEND!

By Ryan Broderick

Ryan Broderick BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on January 20, 2017, at 1:28 a.m. ET

In Japan it’s common for women to give men chocolate on Valentine’s Day. And because of that, there are brands of ramen you can get with chocolate.

The one on the left above with the heart is more of a casual chocolate ramen. The package sort of says you're meant to give it to a friend. But the one on the right, that’s a romantic kind. It even has a place on the back where you can write a note to your boyfriend.

OK, technically, both of these are not exactly ramen, but yakisoba, which is like a fried noodle dish that you make the same way as a cup of ramen, but there’s no broth.

Right, so, let’s take a look at what’s going on under the hood.

As you can see, it’s your typical ramen setup, just, uh, with, like, chocolate powder mix.

We filled these bad boys up and let them “cook."

The package said you needed to wait about three minutes. I wasn't exactly excited.

Oh, and before we get to the chocolate part, I need to point out that the packages have this amazing vent.

To dump out your water! It was very cool. But also, I am easily impressed, I suppose.

Alright, so back to the chocolate ramen. After the noodles were all noodle-y, it was time to dump the chocolate on.

Yeah.

The more casual ramen brand, the one you're supposed to give your friends, had this super-salty black slime thing that didn't taste like chocolate, but also didn't not taste like chocolate, I guess.

Alright, now, for the moment of truth.

Is it possible that ramen and chocolate would actually go perfect together? Like a chocolate-covered potato chip? What if chocolate noodles are the snack of the future and we just don't know it yet.

Nope.

Both of them were, uh...

Yeah, they were disgusting, to be honest. The casual friend one was grosser than the romantic one, but they were both pretty rank. The best way to describe the taste would be like burned hair, salt, and the milk you'd drink at the bottom of a bowl of Cocoa Puffs cereal.

But, just to make sure this wasn't an instance of my undeveloped American tastebuds not being able to appreciate the subtle flavors of a Japanese snack, I had Eimi, a writer for BuzzFeed Japan, give them a slurp.

Eimi's verdict: "If a boy gave me this for Valentine's Day, I would punch him in the face."

Ryan Broderick is a senior reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York City.

Contact Ryan Broderick at ryan@buzzfeed.com.

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