Last Thursday evening, hundreds of hungry students lined up in the Green Center of Performing Art’s Great Hall with a common goal: to score a bowl of steaming ramen.
DePauw’s Japanese Club sought to satisfy the student body’s cravings with their second annual Ramen Fest. Weeks before the event, DePauw students could keep up with J-Club on its social media pages, which detailed their preparations.
“We’ve been planning for it all year, so it’s a long process,” said sophomore Amelia Black, J-Club’s Vice President.
Last year when J-Club was founded, Black came up with the idea in order to bring people together through a love of food.
“I wanted to see international and domestic students come together, and I think that food is one of the easiest ways to bring people together,” Black said.
Junior Tatsuya Katsuhara, J-Club’s president, agreed that free food was definitely what led many people to the event.
“One thing is that ramen is definitely a popular thing, especially for college students,” Katsuhara said. “And I think people are really attracted to free food events in general.”
J-Club also wanted to share true ramen with the DePauw community.
“For many of the people here, it’s really rare for them to experience real Japanese ramen,” Katsuhara said. “The kind of ramen we serve is the kind we actually eat in Japan.”
The event was also a great opportunity for J-Club to get DePauw students interested in Japanese culture.
“Sometimes it’s hard to get people interested in foreign culture at DePauw; everyone is super busy and just doesn’t have much time to invest, but a lot of people think that their time is worthy of ramen,” Black said.
DePauw students were definitely excited about the free Ramen, as over 500 people showed up, some waiting in line for over half an hour.
“I’ve been waiting all year for this event. I follow DePauw University on snapchat and I saw this a year ago, and I’ve been waiting for it to come ever since,” said first-year Kelly Siempelkamp.
First-year Everett Wise was thrilled about the novel dining option. “I’m excited for some more diverse food options at DePauw,” Wise said.
According to Katsuhara, this year, the Ramen fest drew in more than twice as many people as it did last year. But the J-Club still hopes to improve the event in the future.
“I think we’re gonna stick to 500 people, but we were thinking about incorporating some musical performances, and we were trying to recruit some School of Music people,” Katsuhara said. “I think for next year, we can do some sort of cultural workshop or just some musical performances.”
Though the group did get to promote J-Club in the days leading up to the festival, publicity for the club was not their only goal.
“A lot of people didn’t know of J-Club, but they just heard there was a ramen festival,” Katsuhara said. “I think our purpose of having a ramen festival this year was not really to advertise J-Club, but more to disseminate Japanese culture.”