How Many Originals Can One Ramen Shop Have?

One bowl of ramen, several similar names, and a surprisingly complicated family tree.

Ramen at Ganso Ramen Nagahamake in Otemon, Fukuoka, in November 2026. Photo by the author.

1. I Ended Up Having Ramen for Breakfast

In November 2026, I found myself having Nagahama ramen for breakfast in Fukuoka.

The restaurant was called Ganso Ramen Nagahamake.

Nagahama ramen is one of the well-known varieties of tonkotsu ramen associated with Fukuoka. It typically consists of thin noodles served in a pork-bone broth.

This particular restaurant, however, does things a little differently.

I had eaten Nagahama ramen before, and I already knew about its unusual ordering system. Nothing about the process particularly surprised me this time.

But when I first visited a restaurant called Ganso Nagahamaya in 2004, I knew nothing about it.

And there is already a problem with those two restaurant names.

Ganso Nagahamaya.

Ganso Ramen Nagahamake.

They look and sound remarkably similar.

They are not the same restaurant.

And unfortunately, that is only the beginning.

2. You Walked In. You Already Ordered Ramen.

At most ramen restaurants, you enter, look at the menu, and decide what to order.

At the original Ganso Nagahamaya, things used to work differently.

Simply walking through the door was effectively an order for ramen.

You did not need to study a menu or decide which dish you wanted.

There was only one basic answer.

Ramen.

Your remaining choices concerned how that ramen should be prepared.

You could specify the firmness of the noodles, the amount of green onions, and the amount of fat in the broth. You could also order additional noodles, extra meat, or alcoholic drinks.

In other words, you were not so much ordering ramen as configuring the bowl you had already ordered.

Naturally, the configuration came with its own vocabulary.

Take nama, for example.

In Japanese, nama ordinarily means “raw.” But nobody was asking the kitchen to serve uncooked noodles.

At these restaurants, nama refers to noodles boiled for a very short time, leaving them particularly firm.

Then there is beta, which means extra fat.

Put the two together and you get beta-nama: extra fat and very firm noodles.

Whether a first-time visitor could understand all this without an explanation is another matter.

I certainly did not know the system when I first visited in 2004.

Incidentally, This Is Also Where Kaedama Supposedly Began

There is another feature of Nagahama ramen worth mentioning: kaedama.

Kaedama is the practice of ordering an additional serving of noodles to put into the broth already in your bowl.

Today, it is widely associated with Hakata-style ramen, but Ganso Nagahamaya is commonly credited with originating the practice.

The restaurant began as a food stall serving people around Fukuoka’s fish market.

According to accounts of its history, the market workers needed meals that could be prepared and served quickly. Thin noodles, which require relatively little cooking time, suited that environment.

There was a drawback, however.

Thin noodles tend to soften quickly when left in hot broth.

One explanation for the development of kaedama is that customers could eat a smaller initial serving and order more freshly cooked noodles without having to order another bowl of soup.

There is also a story that the practice began when a customer asked for additional noodles because throwing away the remaining broth seemed wasteful.

The precise history is not entirely settled, but Ganso Nagahamaya is widely associated with the origins of this now-familiar ramen custom.

Back to my breakfast in 2026.

Ganso Ramen Nagahamake still used the traditional ordering system.

I ordered beta-nama.

I enjoyed it just fine.

But afterward, I realized I probably did not need the extra fat.

Nama alone would have been enough.

That was about it.

3. One Character Apart. Then Exactly the Same Name.

Now, back to the names.

The original restaurant is called 元祖長浜屋.

The restaurant I visited in 2026 is called 元祖ラーメン長浜家.

In Japanese, the difference is at least visible.

The original ends with 屋.

The offshoot ends with 家.

These are two different kanji characters.

The original restaurant is commonly called Ganso Nagahamaya, with the final character pronounced ya.

The offshoot is often called Ganso Ramen Nagahamake, with the final character pronounced ke.

But even the pronunciation has an additional complication.

In a 2012 Japanese trademark judgment involving the name 長浜家, the court treated Nagahamaya as a pronunciation arising from the registered mark.

In other words, local usage and the pronunciation considered in a legal analysis do not necessarily line up neatly.

For clarity, I will use Nagahamaya for the original restaurant and Nagahamake for its offshoots throughout this article.

So far, we have two businesses with almost identical names, differing by one kanji character.

But things get worse.

There were also multiple restaurants called 元祖ラーメン長浜家.

Not just similar names.

Exactly the same Japanese characters.

And exactly the same written name.

At that point, even knowing Japanese did not help much.

This really happened.

The original Ganso Nagahamaya in 2008. Notice the final character, 屋, rather than 家. Photo by the author.

4. The Original Had an Offshoot. Then the Offshoot Split.

To understand what happened, we need to go back to the original restaurant.

Ganso Nagahamaya traces its origins to 1952 and is one of the established names in Nagahama ramen history.

In 2009, a group of experienced employees who had worked at the restaurant left and opened another shop.

They called it Ganso Ramen Nagahamake.

According to contemporary reporting, disagreements over working conditions were among the factors behind the departure.

The new restaurant served a similar style of ramen under a remarkably similar name.

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So far, this was not necessarily unusual. Restaurant employees sometimes leave to establish their own businesses.

But the story did not stop there.

Disagreements reportedly emerged among people involved in the new restaurant.

In 2010, individuals who had left that business opened another ramen shop.

Its name?

Ganso Ramen Nagahamake.

Yes.

The same name.

An offshoot of Ganso Nagahamaya had become Ganso Ramen Nagahamake.

Then people from Ganso Ramen Nagahamake opened another Ganso Ramen Nagahamake.

The two offshoots came to be distinguished by informal labels: 家1 and 家2, referring to the first and second shops.

The first is commonly called Kei-ichi, while the second is also known as Ie-ni.

For simplicity, I will refer to them as the first and second Nagahamake restaurants.

Same written name. Different businesses.

Incidentally, the restaurant where I had breakfast in 2026 was the first of these offshoots, commonly called 家1.

Unsurprisingly, the naming arrangement led to disputes.

The operators of the first Ganso Ramen Nagahamake argued that customers could confuse the two establishments. They sought to prevent the newer restaurant from using the name and also pursued damages.

There was, however, a complication.

Before the second restaurant opened, the parties had signed a written agreement allowing the newer business to use the same restaurant name.

The first restaurant later argued that the permission had been subject to conditions.

The court examined that agreement and ultimately rejected the request to prohibit the newer restaurant from using the name.

In 2013, the Fukuoka District Court dismissed claims brought by both sides. A subsequent appeal by the party seeking to prevent use of the name was also dismissed.

There was a separate dispute over the validity of a trademark registration involving the name. An attempt to invalidate the registration was unsuccessful.

In short, the trademark remained registered, while the effort to stop the other restaurant from using the name failed.

Thus, employees left the original ramen shop and established a new one.

That new shop experienced another split.

The resulting businesses had identical written names.

And the disagreement ended up in court.

As if that were not enough, other ramen shops in the area also used combinations of “Original” and “Nagahama” in their names.

At one point, reports described five such establishments within a radius of roughly 100 meters.

Expecting someone who simply wants a bowl of ramen to understand the entire family tree might be asking rather a lot.

5. Apparently, I Had Eaten at Another Related Shop

While looking through my old photographs, I discovered something else.

In February 2021, I had eaten ramen at a restaurant called Ganso Ramen Hakata Gennaga, located in the Imaizumi area of Fukuoka.

The restaurant opened in 2018.

According to a local ramen publication, someone who had worked at both the original Ganso Nagahamaya and Ganso Ramen Nagahamake was reportedly involved in establishing the business.

That gave it another connection to the already complicated Nagahama ramen family.

This does not necessarily mean it was an officially authorized offshoot, or that its relationship with the other shops can be represented by a simple parent-and-child diagram.

It was, at the very least, another independent restaurant with a reported personnel connection to the same history.

Ramen at Ganso Ramen Hakata Gennaga in Imaizumi, Fukuoka, in February 2021. Photo by the author.

Looking back, my visits had gone something like this.

In 2004 and 2008, I ate at the original Ganso Nagahamaya.

In 2021, I visited Hakata Gennaga.

In 2026, I ate at Ganso Ramen Nagahamake.

I had not been deliberately tracing the lineage of Nagahama ramen restaurants.

Whenever I happened to be in Fukuoka, I had simply gone out for ramen.

6. The Original Got a Ticket Machine. The Offshoot Kept the Old System.

There is one more curious detail about these restaurants.

Their ordering systems.

When I first visited the original Ganso Nagahamaya in 2004, entering the restaurant was effectively enough to order ramen.

By the time I returned in 2008, however, the restaurant I visited was using a meal-ticket system.

A ticket machine is visible in one of the photographs I took during that visit.

Ganso Nagahamaya in April 2008. A meal-ticket machine was already in use and can be seen partly obscured near the entrance. Photo by the author.

Yet when I visited Ganso Ramen Nagahamake in 2026, the old system was still operating.

The original restaurant had changed the way customers ordered at the location I visited.

One of its later offshoots had preserved the earlier method.

The original had moved on.

The offshoot had kept the old routine.

A slightly peculiar reversal.

7. So Which One Is the Original?

The historical starting point is Ganso Nagahamaya.

That part is not particularly mysterious.

It is one of the foundational names in Nagahama ramen, and it is also widely credited with originating kaedama.

What happened afterward was rather less straightforward.

Former employees established another restaurant. That restaurant split. Similar names became identical written names. Trademark disputes and lawsuits followed.

And somehow, over more than twenty years, I had managed to eat at several restaurants connected to this history.

I had never intended to trace their family tree.

I had simply eaten ramen whenever I visited Fukuoka.

Only after looking back through my photographs and reading about the restaurants did I discover how complicated their history had become.

Fortunately, you do not need to understand the family tree before eating the ramen.

You might, however, need to understand how to order it.

Sources & Notes

The personal visits described in this article took place in 2004, 2008, 2021, and 2026. The accompanying photographs were taken by the author.

Historical accounts of the restaurants and the origins of kaedama are based on the following sources. Some details of kaedama’s early history are traditionally reported rather than conclusively documented.

1. Ganso Nagahamaya — Official Website
   Background information on the original restaurant and its history.
2. Crossroad Fukuoka — Hakata, Nagahama, and Kurume Ramen
   Fukuoka Prefecture’s official tourism guide explains the historical relationship between Nagahama ramen, the fish market, thin noodles, and kaedama.
3. Marutai — Ganso Nagahamaya
   Background on the restaurant’s history and its association with the origins of kaedama.
4. Bengo4.com — The Nagahama Ramen Restaurant Dispute
   May 11, 2019. Reporting based partly on court records, covering the restaurant splits, similar names, and litigation.
5. Fukuoka District Court — Judgment of March 6, 2013
   Case concerning the use of the restaurant name and related claims. The court dismissed claims brought by both sides. The linked page reproduces the judgment in Japanese.
6. Fukuoka High Court — Judgment of January 23, 2014
   Appeal concerning the same restaurant-name dispute. The appeal was dismissed. The linked legal database page provides a case summary (Case No. Heisei 25 (Ne) 366; LEX/DB 25503048).
7. Intellectual Property High Court — Judgment of December 25, 2012 (PDF)
   Case No. Heisei 24 (Gyo-Ke) 10142. Separate proceedings concerning an attempt to invalidate the trademark registration. The judgment also discusses “Nagahamaya” as a pronunciation of 長浜家 for trademark analysis.
8. Fukuoka Ramen Tsushin — Ganso Ramen Hakata Gennaga
   May 20, 2018. Local reporting on the restaurant’s opening and the reported professional background of a person involved in the business.
9. Fukuoka Machimeguri — Ganso Nagahamaya and Ganso Ramen Nagahamake
   Local guide explaining the distinction between the restaurants, the informal names 家1 and 家2, the pronunciation Nagahamake, and their ordering systems.