Maruka Foods Corp said it was recalling two types of instant fried noodles, after "a claim from a customer that a foreign object, an insect, had been spotted inside one of the products".
The company also said in a statement issued yesterday that it had suspended its entire production line for the time being.
The recall affects 46,000 packets of the popular Peyoung instant fried brand, which came into being in the 1970s and has a strong fanbase that refer to themselves as "Peyoungers".
The bug is believed to have slipped into the noodles before they were fried during the manufacturing process, the Mainichi Shimbun daily and other reports said.
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The brand of noodles affected is only sold in Japan, the company said.
The move came a day after Nissin Frozen Foods, a unit of instant noodles pioneer Nissin Foods Holdings, recalled hundreds of thousands of frozen pasta meals after a cockroach was found inside a packet.
However, occasional food scares sometimes prove very costly for manufacturers, who can find themselves shunned by shoppers for years.