A 350-year-old Buddhist temple in Japan may have the best ramen in town. Hozoin Temple, in Kyoto prefecture in southeast Japan, boasts a rich history that dates back to 1669, and the temple’s abbot shared with Yomiuri TV that volunteers had begun to sell vegetarian ramen to fund the management and maintenance of their collection of 60,0000 wooden planks. The thin wooden strips are used for writing classic texts, and 48,000 of the tablets have been designated as “important cultural properties” by the Japanese government.
However, the tablets are piled in a storage room that is over 60 years old and has no cooling or heating system. The manual labour required to maintain the wood in these conditions was expensive, and the temple needed a creative strategy to make some money. The income from traditional offerings falls far short of covering the temple’s financial needs.
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