ZURU+ ramen jewellery: oodles of noodles
Wear your love of ramen with pride. ZURU+ has launched the world’s first ‘ramen jewellery brand’.
Here’s what women want: food and bling
ZURU+ rep Satoko Morimoto has a big hand in running the ‘Ramen Joshi Haku’ female-friendly foodie events in Japan. The weekenders, in Tokyo and Osaka, are fully aimed at women.
(You know Morimoto-san means business – her blog’s called ‘the woman who lives for ramen’. She’s rumoured to eat over 600 bowls of noodles a year.)
Before that, Morimoto-san worked in fashion. At a clothes store, but that totally counts. She’s brought trendy style and soupy noodles together, creating ramen-inspired ring designs for both men and women.
Where’s the ZURU+ name from? In Japanese, the onomatopoeia ‘zuruzuru’ (ズルズル) can mean ‘slurping’. Which you legally have to do whenever you eat ramen, or else you’re going to hell. (Just kidding. You only go to hell if you don’t finish the whole bowl.)
A truly touching noodle experience
You can’t make ramen jewellery without proper ramen to base the designs on. The noodle texture and quality help shape each ring, y’know.
Menya Teigaku‘s the first official ‘noodle provider’ for ZURU+. They’re based in Kyoto, and supply a bunch of restaurants with custom noodles. Talk to Teigaku about the ramen you’ve been seeing in your dreams, and they’ll try making it a reality.
We swear, the real-life ramen choice honestly makes a difference. You can feel the texture of 100% Japanese wheat noodles in how the rings are moulded. Yep, that might be the weirdest sentence we’ve written all year.
Branching out from dolls to ramen bowls
The rings are made by Ichida Factory, a small team with over 20 years of experience.
Everything from Ichida Factory’s handmade – their slogan’s ‘the jewellery shop where craftworkers seriously play around’. So they’re here to (seriously) play with your fave food.
‘Ichida’, in the kanji they use (一朶), means ‘1 flower branch’. In a world full of cute and lovely things, Ichida Factory wants to create truly unique jewellery. Like the ‘My Moon’ pendant, that you have to finish yourself.
Polish it with the cloth (included), to change which bits have light and shadow. Full moon, half moon (falf moon?), crescent moon, or any waxing and waning in between.
When you’re done, the final look – and work you’ve put in – makes that necklace 100% individual.
Ichida Factory also makes necklaces for dolls. Or ‘your precious darling’, if you’re that type of weeb. (Spot the ‘please note this necklace does not come with a doll’ line in the item description.)
Portion sizes to fit your fingers
For the first release, ZURU+ had 5 ring designs:
- Ramen ring with diamonds
- Ramen ring with black cubic zirconia
- Thunder Wave ring
- Ramen Triple ring
- Thunder Triple ring
Each ring’s produced in solid silver, gold-plated metal, and 18-karat gold, with varied prices to match. Plus, they’re all made to function as unisex jewellery. Choose any design in S, M, L, or LL size.
Product pics are insanely high-res, so you can see every detail. The finish looks like flour-dusted noodle dough. Maybe that’s not something you’ve ever looked for in a ring, but we bet you will now.
Every item page makes sure to list the ramen water content and noodle thickness, too. Not many jewellers can tell you that stuff. But… most ZURU+ ring thicknesses are for udon, not ramen. Busted!
‘Thunder’ rings use Teigaku’s legendary thunder noodles. They’re tough – in the good ‘don’t fall apart when you dunk ’em in miso soup way’, not the bad ‘really chewy’ way.
You can see every single crease, bend and wrinkle recreated in the metal. Creepy and impressive, all at once. It’s an insane level of accuracy, that’ll have you staring down at the back of your hand for hours.
The diamond and cubic zirconia designs are reversible, kinda. Turn the band over on your finger to hide the stones, if you’re not feeling so flashy.
The ZURU+ website calls the design the ‘wafting personality of a prince’. Eat like a king, accessorise like a prince, feel like a queen. Sure, we can get on board with that. Especially with the diamond rings, like soup drops on a steaming hot noodle bowl.
Like your noodles done a certain way? No problem
Your other option’s an order-made ring, same way you’d customise a ramen bowl.
And you just know Ichida Factory wants in on those custom requests! They’ll whip up one-of-a-kind wedding and engagement rings, and other insanely personalised jewellery just for you.
There are hundreds of ramen noodle types out there, in Japan and all over the world.
Menya Teigaku makes close to 200. They create and test so many noodles, the CEO eats up to 8 bowls of ramen every day. We kinda admire his dedication to the job…
Choose the noodles that mean something to you. Is it the anniversary of your fave ramen shop? Went on the perfect dinner date last week? Your #1 ramen’ll get faithfully represented in ring form, down to the noodle shape and smoothness.
Japan, now and forever the best place to get ramen
Authentic, fresh ramen from Japan‘s a one-of-a-kind eating experience – there’s nothing else like it. And ZURU+ ramen rings are a unique way to show off your love for noodle soup.
You can order ZURU+ jewellery through the DEJAPAN item request form.
