Photo by Michael Lee on Unsplash
Order “reimen” in most of Japan and you’ll get a blank look or a plate of chilled ramen. Order it in Morioka, the capital of Iwate Prefecture, and you’ll get something far more distinctive: a bowl of glassy, almost rubbery noodles in an icy, faintly sweet beef or chicken broth, a wedge of watermelon or Asian pear perched on the rim, and a small mountain of fiery kimchi you’re expected to spoon in yourself, bite by bite, until the broth turns from refreshing to properly spicy. It’s one of Morioka’s three signature noodle dishes (alongside jajamen and wanko soba), and it’s reason enough on its own to build a day or two in Iwate into a Tohoku itinerary.
What Morioka Reimen Actually Is
Morioka reimen traces back to the early 1950s, when Korean residents in the city adapted Pyongyang-style naengmyeon to local tastes and ingredients. The noodles are the giveaway: made from wheat flour and potato or sweet potato starch rather than buckwheat, they come out translucent, very chewy, and almost bouncy — closer in texture to Korean naengmyeon or even glass noodles than to soba or ramen. They’re served cold in a broth built from beef or chicken bones, seasoned to a clean, lightly sweet-savory balance rather than anything heavy.
The spice isn’t mixed in by the kitchen. Each bowl arrives with a portion of chili-laced kimchi on the side, and diners stir it in to taste — a little for a mild, tangy bowl, all of it for something that will make you sweat even with ice cubes floating in the broth. This DIY heat control is the whole point of the dish, and it’s worth understanding before you sit down.
How to Order It (and Not Overdo the Kimchi)
The most common rookie mistake is dumping in the entire kimchi portion at once because it looks small. It isn’t. Iwate kimchi for reimen is built to be potent, and once it’s stirred into cold broth you can’t dial it back. Add it in two or three small spoonfuls, tasting between each, especially if you’re ordering alongside someone who wants a milder bowl — some shops will let you request extra kimchi on the side (追いキムチ, oi-kimuchi) for a small additional charge instead of loading the standard portion all at once.
Most menus also offer a choice of beef broth or chicken broth (some shops do a mixed version), and many let you choose noodle firmness. If you’re not used to intensely chewy noodles, say so — some shops will adjust. Expect to pay roughly ¥900–1,100 for a standard bowl of reimen on its own, or ¥1,300–1,600 as part of a set with yakiniku, bibimbap, or gyoza, which is how many locals actually order it: reimen as the cooling finale after a round of grilled meat.
Where to Try It in Morioka
Shokudoen (食道園) is generally credited as the originator of Morioka reimen, dating to the 1950s, and its main branch near Morioka Station is still considered the benchmark bowl by many locals. It functions as a yakiniku restaurant first, with reimen as the closing act — a good budget-to-mid-range choice if you want the full grilled-meat-then-noodles experience for around ¥2,500–3,500 per person.
Pyonpyonsha (ぴょんぴょん舎) is the name most visitors will recognize, with a flagship a short walk from Morioka Station and several other branches around the city. It’s touristy and often has a short wait in the evening, but the reimen is reliably good, portions are generous, and the menu has English and photos, which makes it the easiest first stop if you’re not confident ordering in Japanese. A bowl alone runs roughly ¥950–1,050; combo sets with yakiniku push toward ¥2,000–3,000.
Daiichi Hanten (第一亭) and several smaller, long-running yakiniku-ya around the station and Odori area also serve respected versions of the dish at lower prices and with shorter lines, if you’d rather skip the queue at the bigger names — worth asking your hotel or a local tourist information desk for whichever is currently least crowded, since popularity shifts year to year.
For a splurge version of the night out, pair reimen with a full yakiniku course of Iwate’s prized short-horn beef (Iwate-gyu) at a sit-down grill restaurant — expect ¥5,000–8,000 per person — and treat the noodles as the proper ending rather than the main event.
Getting to Morioka
Morioka is a straightforward Tohoku Shinkansen trip from Tokyo: the Hayabusa service takes about 2 hours 10 minutes and costs around ¥14,000–15,000 one-way for a reserved seat (less with a rail pass that covers Tohoku, if you’re holding one). From Morioka Station, the main reimen shops cluster within a 10–15 minute walk or a short taxi ride, so you don’t need a car for a noodle-focused day trip.
If you’re building out a longer Tohoku route, Morioka also connects well by local or express train to the Sanriku Railway on the Iwate coast, making it realistic to combine a reimen lunch in the city with a coastal rail trip the same week.
Best Time to Go
Despite being a cold dish, Morioka reimen is eaten year-round and locals order it in winter as readily as summer — the broth is chilled but the overall meal, especially paired with yakiniku, isn’t meant to be a hot-weather-only food. That said, summer (July–August) is when it feels most purpose-built: Morioka can get surprisingly hot and humid, and a bowl of icy, spicy noodles is genuinely one of the better ways to cool down after a day of sightseeing. If your trip lines up with early February, consider combining it with a detour north to see Hachinohe Enburi in neighboring Aomori, since both are reachable from the same Tohoku Shinkansen line.
A Note for Noodle Completists
If Morioka reimen gets you interested in Japan’s regional cold-noodle culture more broadly, it’s worth comparing notes with other chilled dishes that work on completely different principles — Okinawa’s seaweed-based mozuku or the jelly-like tokoroten are both worlds away from reimen’s chewy, starch-based noodles, but they’re part of the same national instinct for building entire dishes around texture and temperature rather than heavy seasoning. And if you’re touring Tohoku’s regional specialties in general, don’t skip Yamagata’s riverside imoni hot pot tradition on the opposite end of the temperature spectrum — autumn taro stew cooked outdoors over an open fire, which makes an interesting bookend to a summer bowl of reimen in Morioka.
However you build the itinerary, go in hungry, add the kimchi slowly, and don’t be shy about asking staff which broth and noodle firmness they’d recommend — in a city with three competing noodle traditions, the people serving you eat this food every day and genuinely like talking about it.