A yearlong Yume Wo Katare ticket leads a healthy life
Hoshii T1,2,3*
1. Department of Pediatric Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
2. Division of Hematology/Oncology, Boston Children's Hospital
3. Harvard Medical School*e-mail: morevegetablesandalittlegarlic@gmail.com
Abstract
Yume Wo Katare (YWK) is a ramen shop in Boston. This is not only a ramen shop, but also a
dream workshop. After finishing a bowl of ramen, many customers share their dreams in this placeand encourage each other. This opportunity motivates people to live in a positive way. The YWKramen is a Jiro-style ramen and while it is thought to be an unhealthy food, it is unclear how thebowl affects our health. To prove the healthy life with YWK, I constantly ate bowls of ramen byusing a yearlong ticket, shared dreams, and monitored my body for one year. I visited YWK 123
times with at least 123 guests in a year. My body indicated that eating one bowl every three days
has no effect on physical health. This study also attracted many new customers to visit YWK andpromoted a production of dreams. Taken together, my study suggests that the YWK ticket would
strengthen mental and physical health by enabling networking, nutrition, dreaming andencouraging others.
Introduction
Boston is a college city in the USA, and many
students come from outside of New England
to study here. Boston is ranked #3 best global
startup ecosystem in the USA. Most people
temporarily come and end up staying in
Boston for their future. To study or work in a
stressful environment and be successful, it isvery important for them to have some dreams
for the future. But, at the same time thosepeople have worries as well. To encourage
each other, they may need more space toshare dreams.
Ramen is a Japanese noodle bowl. It
contains wheat noodles, broth and sometoppings such as chashu (sliced pork),
veggies, egg, etc. Jiro-style is one of the
popular Japanese ramen styles, and it comeswith chewy thick noodles, rich broth, a layerof bean sprouts, fatty chashu, and mincedgarlic. Yume Wo Katare (YWK) is one of thefamous Jiro-style ramen shops in Boston,

opened in 2012. “YWK” in Japanese has ameaning of “share your dream”. Surprisingly
the customers of YWK actually share their
dreams after eating their bowl. To share many
dreams in YWK, we have to eat a lot of Jirostyle ramen, which is thought to be an
unhealthy food. It might be easy to finish thebowl since the ramen tastes so good, but it
was previously unclear how the bowls reallyaffect our health over a yearlong period.
Fortunately, I got a yearlong ticket for
YWK at a crowd funding of the Japan
Festival Boston 2017. The ticket gives me
and one guest free ramen any day of the year.
In this study, I constantly ate bowls of ramenwith different guests to prove the YWK ticket
can still allow for a healthy life. I also shared
many dreams and monitored my bodythroughout the year. Here, I show how the
yearlong YWK ticket is good for mental aswell as physical health.

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1Result
TicketYWK donated a yearlong ticket for the crowd
funding of the Japan Festival Boston 2017. I
could not get it on the first round. However,since the ticket was sold earlier than expected,
and it was an attractive item, Mr. Tsuyoshi
Nishioka the owner of YWK decided to
donate one more ticket again for the crowd
funding. On that day, I visited YWK with myfriend, and we discussed whether it wasworth it to get the ticket. In 2016, I moved to
Boston and became a committee member of
the Japan Festival Boston 2017. With just one
week remaining before the festival, I felt that
I did not contribute well to the organizationof the festival. In fact, I really didn’t know
how I could contribute to the festival.
Therefore, I thought the donation was acertain way to support the festival. In
addition to my desire to support the festival,
my friend suggested that I could successfullycomplete my cancer research project if I
decided to donate. On the way home by bus
from YWK, I decided to donate and got the
ticket (Figure 1). The value of the donation to
the festival is very difficult to explain, but the
number of bowls would be one of theobjective ways to compare the value. In 2017,
the price of one regular bowl was $12. This
price indicated that the ticket value was
equivalent to 59 regular bowls of ramen at
YWK (Table 1). Since the ticket allows you
to invite one guest for free, the face value of

Year

Menu

Price ofbowl

the donation can be paid by visiting around30 times with a guest. Because the price ofthe bowl was increased in 2018, the value ofthe yearlong ticket was spontaneously
increased. The official price of a yearlong
ticket is currently $800. These data
demonstrate how the donation was valuablefor those who love YWK and wish to support
the Japan Festival Boston.

Figure 1. The receipt of the fund raising to
the Japan Festival Boston 2017 is shown.
The receipt was received from Indiegogo.

Number of bowls per ticket value

Ticket at crowd funding($700)
2017
Regular
$12
59
Buta
$14
50
2018
Regular
$13
54
Buta
$15
47
Table 1. The number of bowls per a yearlong ticket face value.

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Ticket at YWK ($800)
67
58
62
54

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GuestAfter the Japan Festival Boston 2017, I
visited YWK and started my yearlong ticket.
In total, I visited the YWK in Boston 123
times. Since the ticket allowed for one
additional free guest, I always invited a guest.
I agreed guest to bring his/her friends orfamilies to the meal. For my 100th bowl oframen, I invited 17 people to occupy all of theseats in YWK. For the final day, I invited mycolleagues (9 people) to have a lunch together.
Eventually, I visited YWK with 192 people
and invited 123 people as guests (80individuals, 50 men and 30 women). The
most frequently repeated guest got 23 bowls(13 bowls for free) with me. YWK usually

has a long waiting line of around 15-60 min.
Although the chatting during the meal at
YWK was very difficult, the waiting time
was good for conversation. Theseexperiences helped strengthen our friendship.
Since the bowl of ramen was also free for aguest, it was a great opportunity to invite anindividual who was not well known eachother. I actively invited a person who has
never visited YWK, then introduced the place,and removed their fear to visit there. 41
guests (one-third of total guests) visited here
for their first time. Taken together, the ticket
contributed to my networking as well as theadvertising of YWK in Boston.

Figure 2. I took selfies with guests at YWK. Selfies were collected from the 3rd visit onward.
Tiling photo was blurred to protect personal information.

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RamenI usually ordered “Regular”, a ramen with 2
slices of chashu, but sometimes ordered“Buta”, a ramen with 5 slices of chashu. It
was totally dependent on my physicalcondition and how many times I had eaten
there that week. Even though I ordered“Regular”, the amount of vegetable, firmnessof noodles or saltiness of broth was changed
every time. It is usually depended on the chefof the day or time of the visit. YWK usually
serves only one flavor but these differences
made it fun to visit and order from the samemenu. “More veggies” option would be
preferable as a healthier selection and it

makes a bowl more instagenic. In contrast to
the more veggies option, “more fat” option
on Buta bowl could be dangerous. It is very
tasty, but I had a stomachache later that night.
It may help us to lose our weight acutely, so
we call this a “Yumekata diet”. YWK also
has an “Extra” option with $1, and you canget extra noodles with another bowl. They
also have popup menu, including Gekikara
ramen, Curry ramen, Tsukemen, Okinawasoba, etc. These differences in chefs or menu
variety made it possible to visit 3 times aweek without getting sick of eating YWKbowls.

Figure 3. Bowls at YWK and YGA are shown. 120 photos of bowls at YWK and YGA weretaken. This figure indicates the diversity of bowls in every single meal. One photo is duplicatedand randomly placed as an internal control (also see the materials and method section).

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4PlaceYWK in Boston is located at Porter area
(Figure 4). It is very close to the Porter SQ
Red line station. I usually biked from the
Longwood Medical Area, where I work andlive. It takes 25 min. In winter, I used bus andtrain option. The #47 bus from Longwood
Medical Area to Central SQ takes 20-40 min.
M2 shuttle bus from in front of Harvard
medical school to Harvard University is alsoavailable. In both cases, I used a Red linefrom Central SQ. Red line from Central SQ
to Porter SQ takes 10 min. If it is nice weather,bike is better not only for time but also for the
exercise. The place has no roof over thewaiting line, so we needed an umbrella forrainy days. Even in a rain or snow, we haveto stay outside to wait in line. Waiting time
would be 15-60 min. If you are impatient, I
recommend visiting here either before 6:30
pm or after 9:00 pm for dinner (open 5:00 pm– 10:00 pm, Tue - Sat).
Figure 4. The Outside of YWK.

Order System
Since YWK in Boston has three lanes of tablefor 18 people (6 people per lane), the staff
allows 6 customers to go inside the shop
together from a waiting line. If you take a big
party to this place, you may have to wait morethan usual. The staff prefers to make exact 6

people as a group. So, you may be able to skip
the big group by waiting alone. I usuallyinvited only one guest for a dinner, and it did
not seem to have any effect on the waitingtime. The ticket does not allow you to skip
the waiting line. You need wait even if it is arainy or stormy day. The place allows cash
only. But it is no problem for ticket holder.
Only one thing you have to do at the register
is to show your yearlong ticket. You canorder whatever you want, which is one of thebest benefits of having this ticket.
Judge
YWK has a unique system to judge your skill
to achieve your dream. When you finish abowl, YWK staff evaluates your bowl andscreams either “Perfect (nothing in thebowl)”, “Good job (only broth in the bowl)”,“Almost (still there are some left over)” or“Next time (full in the bowl)”. For YWK
staffs, your skill to focus on your bowl has
the same meaning as your skill to focus on
your dream. I got 1 perfect, 121 good job, and2 almost in this year (Since I ate 2 bowls in
one day, and one was good job but the otherwas almost).
Way to Share Dreams
After your order and payment, a staff asks
customers whether to share their dreams ornot. If you say “YES”, you will get a flag torepresent your willingness to share yourdreams (Figure 5). When you finish yourbowl, a staff asks you to share your dreams.
The first time I visited this place, I did notshare my dream at all.
Through theexperiences over this past year, I am now
used to it. Now I’ve understood that the
dream is not required to be an “American
Dream”, which is usually too difficult toachieve. Even a very small or short-term
dream, like “get up early in the morning”, isgood enough in this place. Once a person
achieves it, he/she will have new dreams.

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5And then after repeating dream updating at
this place, some of them will find a big dreamthat would be very difficult to dream on a first
visit. It can spontaneously occur in this place.
To promote this positive feedback loop,
YWK in Boston has an interesting program
called “Positive cycle”. The customer can
pay a tip. All of tips are changed to key chainsfor a free bowl of ramen. If a customer gets a“Good job” or “Perfect” and then permits toshare his/her dream on the YWK SNS
accounts, the customer will get a key chain
for a free bowl for the next visit. The
customer can repeat this process to get a bowl
for free forever with this program. By using
this system, many customers autonomously
produce their dreams at this place. In thissystem, a dreamer can eat a bowl for free, andpeople can support the dreamers. The concept
to share dreams makes YWK a unique placein Boston as well as all over the world.

Staff
The staff are super friendly. Many of them
are working as volunteers. It is incredible.
They also enjoyed our visiting and served a
special bowl to my guest or me. Withoutthem, I would not have visited there so manytimes. They also have many dreams to share.
I really appreciated when they shared their
dreams. Their performance encourages
customers who visit here for the first time. I
know that not all customers choose to share
dreams and it would be painful for them tohear any words of decline from customer.
Even I did not share dreams every time. But
their routine service definitely encouraged
me to think again and again about my big
dream that I already shared. Therefore, they
were very important for my mental health.

Figure5. A representative YWK flag to share your dream is shown.

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Body weightYWK serves only one flavor of bowl and it is
the Jiro-style ramen that has rich fatty broth.
Since it is a huge bowl, people usually do notwant to eat it every day. To promote thepositive cycle, it would be better to know
how many bowls of ramen in a year we can
eat without affecting our body weight. I
visited 123 times and I ate a bowl once every
three days. To evaluate the effect on my body,
I monitored my body weight throughout theyear by using a body fat scale. The scale also
showed body fat and BMI. In total, I took
measurements 127 times over the course of

the year (Figure 6). In the 1st week of theperiod, values for my body weight, body fat,and BMI were 65.45 kg, 10.36 % and 21.13,
respectively (Table 2). These values wereshown as standardized levels for my body
type (38 old age, 176 cm height). The last
week of the ticket, the values were 64.22 kg,
11.99 % and 20.73. The means and standard
deviations of these items also indicated thestability of these values in this period (Table2). These results demonstrated that the bowl
would not affect physical health by eating
one bowl every three days.

Figure 6. Values from a body fat scale and intake times of YWK bowl are shown. ▼ indicatesthe day which I had a bowl at YWK. Red, Blue and Green lines show the weight, body fat and
BMI, respectively (n=1).
Weight (kg)Body Fat (%)
BMI
Weeklong
1st
Mean
65.45
10.36
21.13
Last Mean
64.22
11.99
20.73
Yearlong
Mean
65.13
11.65
21.02
Std. Deviation
1.19
1.14
0.38
Table 2. Weeklong and yearlong values from body weight scaling are shown.

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Discussion
Food intake is a fundamental life event andvery important for nutrition as well as
communication. Cooking at home is one of
the good ways to save money and time, but it
makes it difficult to do active networking.
Although eating-out is good for networking,it is difficult to estimate the amount of
payment and usually we have to pay a lot ofmoney to have dinner with people who we are
not close with. YWK has only 2 choices ofbowls and a yearlong ticket allows you to
invite one guest for free. Only 27 visits (andorder two bowls of $15 BUTA) are enough to
get the same value of the original price of the
YWK ticket. In this year, we ate at least 246
bowls with friends by using my ticket and thevalue is over $3,000. It indicates how theticket is valuable for people who like to eat
dinner with others.
Eating a well-balanced diet may help us
with weight loss. It might be true that theexercise is an important factor for effective
weight loss. But it is unclear how my exercise
helps for my body weight maintenancebecause I did not do much exercise in the last
winter season. I enforced myself to run orbike to maintain my body weight in the lastsummer. Interestingly, it helped me to go out
from home and reduced the stress fromstaying at work. Therefore YWK-associatedexercise might have a positive effect onmental rather than physical health.
Unexpectedly, my body fat slightly
increased after finishing the yearlong ticket(Table 2 and 3). It might be associated with

the increasing of food intake at breakfast andlunch. After a YWK bowl at dinner, I did not
eat a lot of breakfast and lunch on the nextday. Therefore, I hypothesize that it might behelp to maintain the balance of body weight.
There are more than 150 breweries in
Massachusetts, which makes it easier to drink
different style tasty beers at or after dinner (1).
But YWK absolutely prevented drinking byserving a huge bowl. These results in mystudy supported the idea that the continuous
eating at YWK is healthier than originally
thought. Unfortunately, it is very difficult torepeat this experiment by myself. We also
have to consider an individual difference on
metabolism, genetic background, intestinal
flora, and so on. We may need to repeat theanalyses together with multiple YWK lovers
by 2030.
YWK in Boston will end in 2030. It is
written on the name-board. It reminds me theimportance to keep in mind a deadline of a
project. It must be very important to set aschedule to achieve something. By using theyearlong YWK ticket, I aimed to invite many
people and enjoy the chatting. Even in theevolutions of the Internet technologies, there
are many benefits of face-to-facecommunication (2). This networking
experience and the memory in this year
would provide an endless positive mind to me.
Finally, this study demonstrated that the
YWK ticket is the best way for saving money,
nutrition, and networking. This is likely true
for other YWK lovers. I wish all the people
having the ticket enjoy making a positive
cycle in their life.

Weight (kg)Body Fat (%)
3 weeks after
Mean
65.05
12.64
the expiration
Std. Deviation
0.80
0.79
Table 3. Body weight in 3 weeks after the YWK ticket expiration are shown.

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BMI
21.02
0.25

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Materials & Methods
Inviting guests
Guests are randomly assigned and invited to YWK. I invited a guess by face-to-face, SNS, or onsite. The scheduling was performed before 1-2 weeks of the event day. The people who leave the
Boston area were preferentially invited.
Commuting
I used a share bike, Hubway (it was changing its name to Blue Bikes), for 3 months until the
expiration of a yearlong key. Hubway was usually used from the Harvard SQ to the Porter SQ.
After the expiration, I changed to ride a road bike that I got from my friend. I used it from the
Longwood medical area to Porter SQ, except for rainy day, windy day and winter season. I also
used both Bus and train. CharlieCard was used for both Bus and Subway (MBTA). Harvard ID
was used for M2 Cambridge-HMS shuttle (MASCO). Uber was also used to save travel time.
EatingRamens were ordered according to the instruction. I ate them by using Tenchi-gaeshi. First I ate
Cha-shu, and then enjoyed the noodle and veggies. I did not taste broth after when I finish thenoodle. I drank water only after eating the ramen to save the stomach space.
Photo
Photos of ramen and Selfies were taken before eating. These were taken by iPhone SE (Apple).
JPEG files were imported to MacBook Pro (Apple). Tiling photos were created by using theCollagelt 3 Free software for Mac (Version 3.6.2., PearlMountain). Adobe Photoshop (Adobe) wasused to blur the tiling photo of selfies. For the internal control in ramen photos, the photo taken on
Jan 3, 2018 was used.
Weighing
Body weight, body fat and BMI were measured by using the Yolanda body fat scale(YOL16070501HK, Yolanda). Data were transferred to iPhone SE (Apple) via Bluetoothtechnology with the Yolanda app. Data was managed with Microsoft Excel for Mac (Microsoft)
and a graph was created with Prism 6 (Prism).
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Tsuyoshi Nishioka and all YWK’s staff members for giving this great
opportunity at YWK. I really appreciate my wife, Michiko Hoshii, for approving this project. I am
grateful to Motoshi Hayano and Ryo Konno for helping me buy a yearlong ticket. I am also gratefulto Ken Hashimoto for sharing the YWK information. I also wish to thank Sarah Perlee for
proofreading the manuscript. I acknowledge all of the guests who I invited to this project.
Reference
1. https://massbrewersguild.org
2. https://toughnickel.com/business/How-to-Have-a-Meaningful-Face-to-Face-Conversation

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