It became a staple of Japanese life and took on symbolic meaning. Ramen has given a national identity to Japan even though it is a hybrid food. Most people in Japan who love ramen would probably be aware that ramen was traditionally a Chinese food, but in other places, like the United States, for example, ramen is almost always associated with Japan and thus we can see that it is something that has transgressed national boundaries (Iwabuchi 51). Even though ramen is a hybrid food, it doesn't take away from that fact that people associate it with Japan. It has taken on cultural significance and has become a way of identifying a culture. How ramen became to mean so much to a culture can be compared to potatoes in Ireland or bread pretty much anywhere. It was a food that filled you up and could be made very cheaply. It became a food of mass consumption. As more and more people came to eat ramen, the ramen noodle...

Today we might not even attribute ramen to Chinese cuisine at all, rather, we might associate rice with Chinese food. Ramen was mixed with the Japanese way of cooking broths and using ingredients that were specific to Japan and so the Chinese soup was put into a new context and put in a relationship with other things that were of Japanese origin, which is how it became a hybrid.
Storey (131) notes that it is important to follow how things change and adapt as they move into new territories. With globalization, we are going to see a lot more of hybrids in many products. Ramen is a great example of something that has changed as it has crossed cultural boundaries.