“I have officially become one of the ramen geeks,” he said.

In Tokyo (and in Japanophile clusters in the United States), ramen is much more than noodles in a rich, meaty broth. Like pizza and burgers in the United States, it has changed from fast food to a canvas of culinary ideas. “Kodawari” ramen is taken seriously and has the same buzzwords as “artisanal” here: free range, long cooked, slow raised, small batch. Ramen is not an ancient dish like sashimi or tofu. While there are vegetarian and seafood versions, the basic soup is rich with fat and meat — which was banned in Japan from approximately the seventh century to the 17th, according to Buddhist edicts.

But it has been popular for long enough to become a national obsession. Ramen otaku — geeks — compete on quiz shows, crowd-source maps and wait hours to try a place with a new twist: whole-grain noodles, for example, or especially thick slices of pork belly. Some ramen shops are famous for their garlicky broths; others for mind-blowing chile heat or intense sesame flavor; others for their strict policies of no talking or no perfume.

How does a self-proclaimed slacker from Long Island go from mediocre high school student to stay-at-home dad in Tokyo to international ramen impresario?

Mr. Orkin describes his family’s attitude toward food as “culinary apathy.” But one seed of his future was planted in Syosset, his hometown: At 15, he got a job washing dishes at a Japanese restaurant and was introduced to real Japanese food by the line cooks. A nagging curiosity about Japan eventually led him to the University of Colorado as a Japanese major. (He also saw the film “Tampopo,” which introduced many Americans to the idea that ramen could be more than noodles and MSG in a plastic foam cup.)

After graduation in 1985, he moved to Tokyo without a job or a place to live. Since then, he has never been away from Japan for long. He married a Japanese woman, Tami, whose job took them to California; next they moved to New York so he could attend the Culinary Institute of America. He spent two years working in some of New York’s top kitchens in the 1990s like Lutèce and Mesa Grill.

“For some reason, those crazy jobs settled me,” he said. “I was always an argumentative know-it-all, but the kitchen taught me to suck it up and shut my mouth.”