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Ramen, Existential Crises
Koji is twenty-seven and one module short of a degree in Politics and Government. The missing module is Crisis Management. It feels appropriate.
For six years, he has worked in a tiny ramen shop with eleven seats, one dish and a broth whose flame has not gone out in thirty-two years. The noodles cook for exactly eighty-five seconds.
Then the timer fails. A stranger gives Koji his business card. Someone from his past walks into the restaurant. Around him, other people make decisions and continue with their lives.
Koji has always known what should be done.
Doing it is another matter.
For six years, he has worked in a tiny ramen shop with eleven seats, one dish and a broth whose flame has not gone out in thirty-two years. The noodles cook for exactly eighty-five seconds.
Then the timer fails. A stranger gives Koji his business card. Someone from his past walks into the restaurant. Around him, other people make decisions and continue with their lives.
Koji has always known what should be done.
Doing it is another matter.
- GenresFiction
166 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 9, 2026
About the author
Roie Oknin
1 book27 followersRoie Oknin is a writer, artist and medical student. He holds a BSc in Neuroscience and a BA in Psychology. Ramen, Existential Crises is his first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 29, 2026
"What is interesting about ramen is that it manages to be both very simple and almost infinite."
Koji was on the precipice of graduating with a degree in Politics and Government when an in-person debate caused his life to completely spiral.
"He never completed his degree, unlike his former classmates ... That was how he saw it, at least. They were succeeding, and he was making soup."
In the six years since school, he has spent nearly every day in Fujihara-san's ramen shop making one dish, and one dish only - a tonkotsu ramen. After the stress of his degree, of graduating, of making a name for himself, Koji felt a comfort in the store.
"The restaurant offered him a world in which every crisis had a physical form. A cracked egg. A late delivery. A blunt knife. ... Such crises could be identified, corrected and, when necessary, thrown away."
But then one day, Koji's timer - which only ever went for 85 seconds for prime noodle done-ness - runs out of battery and his carefully insulated world begins to break apart bit by bit.
"I do not think I know how not to be here," Koji said at last.
I quite liked this story - it had an unique premise and execution which kept me invested in the story.
What stood out the most to me was how much I empathized with Koji. As a former graduate student, so many moments in Koji's life struck a parallel in mine.
The paralyzing indecision regarding "simple" choices, the imposter sensation throughout your classes, the feeling of coming up for air and realizing the neighborhood had changed without you realizing it.
I (luckily) made it through my degree before I had my "Ramen Shop Crisis" but I could have seen myself reacting in a similar vein to Koji once upon a time.
Another thing that caught my attention is the secondary characters - how they did their best to coax Koji through his crisis without making the decisions for him (they'd nudge, but not push). Giving him time to heal and come to his own conclusions regarding his future.
I do wish the book had gone on a chapter or two more - I wanted to see just a bit more of his life and have a firmer conclusion to his story but overall, I rather enjoyed this one!
With thanks to the author for sending me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
August 13, 2026
When I read the first two pages, I knew immediately that this wasn’t a book to be read quickly.
No. This is one of those books you need to read slowly, with some ambient music playing softly in the background, curled up under a fluffy duvet with a cup of tea. A book you don’t simply read. You stay with it. You let it speak to you.
And now I genuinely don’t know how to describe what this book did to me.
What I do know is that Ramen, Existential Crises is one of the best books I have ever read.
Roie, you are a poet. A soul whisperer.
I saw and felt every emotion you wrote. I could smell the broth. I could hear the spring onions being chopped. I could hear the door opening and the little bell above it ringing. I saw the restaurant. I saw the rain outside. I heard the rain. I felt the rain.
I saw Koji. I felt him. I understood him. And most of all, I respected him and his journey.
Roie, your words… oh gosh, your words.
There were moments when I genuinely felt as though I were standing quietly in the corner of the restaurant, just watching and listening. Not reading about these people, but somehow being allowed to exist beside them for a little while.
At first, some of the conversations between the characters seemed almost rude and careless. Then you did something magical.
You showed me love.
Not the loud, invasive kind of care we are so used to seeing. The kind that asks too many questions, demands explanations and sometimes becomes more about the person offering help than the person who actually needs it.
You wrote something quieter.
The love and care between these coworkers existed at a distance. It was silent. It didn’t demand anything.
It simply said:
I care about you, but I respect you.
And that made me cry.
Because there is something incredibly beautiful about caring for someone while still allowing them to belong to themselves.
I’m crying again while writing this review.
Roie, your book changed something in me. This is going onto that very small, very special pile of books I love enough to reread once a year. I’ve already told my friends and family that they need to read it.
Please keep writing.
And if there is ever room for a continuation of this story, please write it. And then, for the love of everything, tell me immediately.
Because you don’t simply write characters.
You write souls.
And that is something so incredibly difficult to come across nowadays. You have a gift.
Can a person fall in love with a book?
Can you fall in love with words so beautifully put together that somewhere along the way they stop feeling like sentences and transform themselves into a melody for your soul?
The answer is yes.
I did.
Thank you, Roie, for this beautiful book. Thank you for Koji. Thank you for the restaurant, the rain, the conversations, the silence, the ramen and all the things that were said without ever needing to be spoken.
And now, to whoever is reading my review:
Please do yourself a favour.
Read Ramen, Existential Crises.
Read it slowly.
Let it stay with you.
Your soul is going to thank you.
No. This is one of those books you need to read slowly, with some ambient music playing softly in the background, curled up under a fluffy duvet with a cup of tea. A book you don’t simply read. You stay with it. You let it speak to you.
And now I genuinely don’t know how to describe what this book did to me.
What I do know is that Ramen, Existential Crises is one of the best books I have ever read.
Roie, you are a poet. A soul whisperer.
I saw and felt every emotion you wrote. I could smell the broth. I could hear the spring onions being chopped. I could hear the door opening and the little bell above it ringing. I saw the restaurant. I saw the rain outside. I heard the rain. I felt the rain.
I saw Koji. I felt him. I understood him. And most of all, I respected him and his journey.
Roie, your words… oh gosh, your words.
There were moments when I genuinely felt as though I were standing quietly in the corner of the restaurant, just watching and listening. Not reading about these people, but somehow being allowed to exist beside them for a little while.
At first, some of the conversations between the characters seemed almost rude and careless. Then you did something magical.
You showed me love.
Not the loud, invasive kind of care we are so used to seeing. The kind that asks too many questions, demands explanations and sometimes becomes more about the person offering help than the person who actually needs it.
You wrote something quieter.
The love and care between these coworkers existed at a distance. It was silent. It didn’t demand anything.
It simply said:
I care about you, but I respect you.
And that made me cry.
Because there is something incredibly beautiful about caring for someone while still allowing them to belong to themselves.
I’m crying again while writing this review.
Roie, your book changed something in me. This is going onto that very small, very special pile of books I love enough to reread once a year. I’ve already told my friends and family that they need to read it.
Please keep writing.
And if there is ever room for a continuation of this story, please write it. And then, for the love of everything, tell me immediately.
Because you don’t simply write characters.
You write souls.
And that is something so incredibly difficult to come across nowadays. You have a gift.
Can a person fall in love with a book?
Can you fall in love with words so beautifully put together that somewhere along the way they stop feeling like sentences and transform themselves into a melody for your soul?
The answer is yes.
I did.
Thank you, Roie, for this beautiful book. Thank you for Koji. Thank you for the restaurant, the rain, the conversations, the silence, the ramen and all the things that were said without ever needing to be spoken.
And now, to whoever is reading my review:
Please do yourself a favour.
Read Ramen, Existential Crises.
Read it slowly.
Let it stay with you.
Your soul is going to thank you.
August 30, 2026
A book about a 27 year old man who finds himself still working in a Ramen shop, six years after not finishing his university degree (by only one module) might not sound interesting, but I can assure you this is anything but boring. I was totally surprised by this novella, and can't recommend it enough. But hey, you can read more in my full review, on my blog here. https://tcl-bookreviews.com/2026/08/3...
August 16, 2026
Koji is a man man without a clear plan and without anywhere else he has to be except the Ramen shop where he cooks the noodles. Koji has forgotten how not to be at the ramen restaurant his world has shrunk down to this tiny place making a one dish menu. He’s forgotten how to leave and spends all his days and even his nights there.
“The noodles were good,’ said the customer. ‘And there really was this feeling… as though the place existed outside time.”
The noodles cook for exactly eighty-five seconds. Then, the timer fails, a stranger presses a business card into Koji’s hand, someone from his past steps back through the door. The world around him simply keeps living, deciding, moving on, choosing, while Koji, who has always known with perfect clarity what should be done, discovers that clarity and action are not the same thing at all.
“The key was in his hand. He could go out. Not far. He could stand outside for one minute. Breathe the air of the first of January. See the restaurant from the outside. See the sign from the CLOSED side rather than the OPEN side, the way other people saw it.
But he did not.He returned to the room containing a thin blanket, a pillow, a shelf with three books he had not finished and a box in which he kept things he did not know were important, or had simply not thrown away because he might need them one day.”
It’s a slim, spare novel with a distinctively controlled comic voice. In a way, the ramen shop becomes a kind of koan: eighty-five seconds , thirty-two years, one dish, with an unspoken question: what happens to a life held at a slow simmer?
“For a long time, the restaurant felt temporary in a useful way. Temporary work postponed the need to choose a permanent life.”
It’s a quiet character study about stasis versus change, wrapped around the ritual and repetition of ramen-making as a metaphor for a life on hold. Everything about the ramen shop, the eighty-five-second noodle timer, the decades-old flame, and the small, closed world of the shop all seem to mirror Koji’s own suspended state. He is competent, capable, and stuck, waiting for something to force his hand.
The book has a lovely spare prose reminiscent of Japanese writing in translation, the characters stay with you afterwards along with the recognition that we can all get stuck in our own ruts out of complacency or fear.
“The noodles were good,’ said the customer. ‘And there really was this feeling… as though the place existed outside time.”
The noodles cook for exactly eighty-five seconds. Then, the timer fails, a stranger presses a business card into Koji’s hand, someone from his past steps back through the door. The world around him simply keeps living, deciding, moving on, choosing, while Koji, who has always known with perfect clarity what should be done, discovers that clarity and action are not the same thing at all.
“The key was in his hand. He could go out. Not far. He could stand outside for one minute. Breathe the air of the first of January. See the restaurant from the outside. See the sign from the CLOSED side rather than the OPEN side, the way other people saw it.
But he did not.He returned to the room containing a thin blanket, a pillow, a shelf with three books he had not finished and a box in which he kept things he did not know were important, or had simply not thrown away because he might need them one day.”
It’s a slim, spare novel with a distinctively controlled comic voice. In a way, the ramen shop becomes a kind of koan: eighty-five seconds , thirty-two years, one dish, with an unspoken question: what happens to a life held at a slow simmer?
“For a long time, the restaurant felt temporary in a useful way. Temporary work postponed the need to choose a permanent life.”
It’s a quiet character study about stasis versus change, wrapped around the ritual and repetition of ramen-making as a metaphor for a life on hold. Everything about the ramen shop, the eighty-five-second noodle timer, the decades-old flame, and the small, closed world of the shop all seem to mirror Koji’s own suspended state. He is competent, capable, and stuck, waiting for something to force his hand.
The book has a lovely spare prose reminiscent of Japanese writing in translation, the characters stay with you afterwards along with the recognition that we can all get stuck in our own ruts out of complacency or fear.
August 21, 2026
Short story: I loved this spare, beautiful story!
From the first page, the writing style of Roie Oknin sucked me in. It’s spare but beautiful, nothing superfluous, everything is exact; just like making the perfect bowl of ramen soup. Koji is an achingly sympathetic character. After dropping out of college, his world shrank to the confines of the noodle shop. Inertia has taken over his life, and he fears anything that might require a choice or an action not involved in the precise ritual of the soup.
I really loved this story of Koji’s struggles, the anxiety that rules his life, and fear of change that has prevented him from making progress. I felt his pain and willed him to take the first step only to be disappointed, not in him but for him. His co-workers became his family, and they prodded him, each in their own way, to pick up the reins of his life and move on.
I think one of the reasons this book really resonated with me is that I can see people I know in Koji. I highly recommend this lovely book to readers who enjoy literary fiction and a great story.
From the first page, the writing style of Roie Oknin sucked me in. It’s spare but beautiful, nothing superfluous, everything is exact; just like making the perfect bowl of ramen soup. Koji is an achingly sympathetic character. After dropping out of college, his world shrank to the confines of the noodle shop. Inertia has taken over his life, and he fears anything that might require a choice or an action not involved in the precise ritual of the soup.
I really loved this story of Koji’s struggles, the anxiety that rules his life, and fear of change that has prevented him from making progress. I felt his pain and willed him to take the first step only to be disappointed, not in him but for him. His co-workers became his family, and they prodded him, each in their own way, to pick up the reins of his life and move on.
I think one of the reasons this book really resonated with me is that I can see people I know in Koji. I highly recommend this lovely book to readers who enjoy literary fiction and a great story.
August 22, 2026
Very delicate storytelling … and a delicate book overall… beautifully bridging humor, drama and great questions and philosophy of life.
Not seen such a complexity packed into a story.
I loved that it lets the reader put their own emotions and thoughts into the story … almost creating their own verion of Ramen… Existential Questions… And Crisis
Well done! When is your next book coming?
Not seen such a complexity packed into a story.
I loved that it lets the reader put their own emotions and thoughts into the story … almost creating their own verion of Ramen… Existential Questions… And Crisis
Well done! When is your next book coming?
September 26, 2026
At first i thought this was just another book about some young person that doesnt know how to go on with life. but then it got interesting, and different, and funny, and beautiful, and genuinely touching.
An easy five stars, and i sincerely hope more people discover this surprising gem of a book. only 10 people have rated it so far. thats nuts because this is so good.
An easy five stars, and i sincerely hope more people discover this surprising gem of a book. only 10 people have rated it so far. thats nuts because this is so good.
September 9, 2026
MY VERDICT:
A quietly moving and deeply atmospheric look at social withdrawal and identity in Japan. Dryly funny.
First, I’d like to give kudos to the author, who managed to write this moving story in a beautiful Japanese style.
Ramen, Existential Crises includes a wonderful introduction to what ramen noodles are, exploring their origins and regional variations.
The very first paragraph perfectly sets the tone for the entire book’s style.
My full review is here:
https://wordsandpeace.com/2026/09/12/...
A quietly moving and deeply atmospheric look at social withdrawal and identity in Japan. Dryly funny.
First, I’d like to give kudos to the author, who managed to write this moving story in a beautiful Japanese style.
Ramen, Existential Crises includes a wonderful introduction to what ramen noodles are, exploring their origins and regional variations.
The very first paragraph perfectly sets the tone for the entire book’s style.
My full review is here:
https://wordsandpeace.com/2026/09/12/...
October 5, 2026
I loved this.
Ramen, Existential Crises is a funny, quiet, wonderfully observant novel about procrastination, routine, responsibility, and the frightening possibility that something temporary can quietly become your life.
Koji has spent years working in a ramen shop after leaving one final university module unfinished. He is not lazy at all—which is exactly what makes the story work. He works constantly, helps everyone, and finds a seemingly endless supply of useful things to do instead of facing the one responsibility that might actually change his life.
The humor is understated, the ramen shop is wonderfully vivid, and Koji is painfully relatable. Beneath the comedy is a surprisingly thoughtful question: how long can you postpone choosing your life before postponement becomes the choice?
Ramen, Existential Crises is a funny, quiet, wonderfully observant novel about procrastination, routine, responsibility, and the frightening possibility that something temporary can quietly become your life.
Koji has spent years working in a ramen shop after leaving one final university module unfinished. He is not lazy at all—which is exactly what makes the story work. He works constantly, helps everyone, and finds a seemingly endless supply of useful things to do instead of facing the one responsibility that might actually change his life.
The humor is understated, the ramen shop is wonderfully vivid, and Koji is painfully relatable. Beneath the comedy is a surprisingly thoughtful question: how long can you postpone choosing your life before postponement becomes the choice?
November 6, 2026
A quirky little book about ramen and avoidant personalities. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while
September 23, 2026
Well worth enjoying your time reading. Fun
October 4, 2026
Honestly, I didn't think i'd enjoy this book this much
I find it hard to read books where not much happens
But so fast I found myself immersed in this little ramen shop.
The author does an amazing job with putting you right inside Koji's mind deep in his doubts and insecurities. He can make the most ordinary of days in the shop feel like an entire saga in the best possible way, he can insert the most profound of philosophical ideas in simple chats about the food and the customers. I came in hesitant but left with tears in my eyes from the penultimate chapter.
I cant wait to see what he publishes next
I find it hard to read books where not much happens
But so fast I found myself immersed in this little ramen shop.
The author does an amazing job with putting you right inside Koji's mind deep in his doubts and insecurities. He can make the most ordinary of days in the shop feel like an entire saga in the best possible way, he can insert the most profound of philosophical ideas in simple chats about the food and the customers. I came in hesitant but left with tears in my eyes from the penultimate chapter.
I cant wait to see what he publishes next
October 25, 2026
I had a good time with this one.
You can't help but feel bad for Koji because, in many ways, he's lost. But there's also this underlying fear of finding the direction he needs, of actually completing the things that he starts, and those decisions, even if it is something as mundane as going to the corner store to buy a battery for a timer, paralyze him.
He wonders what life would look like if he got his degree or moved into his own place, but even those possibilities are too much and don't seem to offer him the reassurance he's searching for. Because what happens when you finally do the things you're supposed to do and still don't know what you're doing with life?
I think many, if not all, of us have been there at some point in our lives, and Ramen, Existential Crises shows us that at some point we may all go through what Koji did, and we can come out of it.
There's something about the softness of the writing and its reflective nature that makes Koji's uncertainty feel all the more human. It doesn't try to make his struggles grander than they are. The pacing is slow, giving the story time to unfold. It allows you to sit with him in that uncomfortable space between where he is and where he thinks he should be.
You can't help but feel bad for Koji because, in many ways, he's lost. But there's also this underlying fear of finding the direction he needs, of actually completing the things that he starts, and those decisions, even if it is something as mundane as going to the corner store to buy a battery for a timer, paralyze him.
He wonders what life would look like if he got his degree or moved into his own place, but even those possibilities are too much and don't seem to offer him the reassurance he's searching for. Because what happens when you finally do the things you're supposed to do and still don't know what you're doing with life?
I think many, if not all, of us have been there at some point in our lives, and Ramen, Existential Crises shows us that at some point we may all go through what Koji did, and we can come out of it.
There's something about the softness of the writing and its reflective nature that makes Koji's uncertainty feel all the more human. It doesn't try to make his struggles grander than they are. The pacing is slow, giving the story time to unfold. It allows you to sit with him in that uncomfortable space between where he is and where he thinks he should be.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews