There’s a Cup Noodle Museum, and it’s cool!

I did not have anything planned for this medium rainy Thursday, and I remembered that there is a cup noodle museum in the vicinity.

Now, I have to be honest. My nutrition since I came to Japan has only been consisting of fancy instagram-able dishes to a small percentage. A much bigger share involves precooked noodle dishes, ranging from typical instant Ramen to precooked Udon which I tend to combine with all sorts of curry, beef hayashi, goma and tomato sauces.

Naturally, the idea of a museum devoted to passion for noodles got me very excited. It’s located near the centre of Yokohama, next to the Landmark Tower and ferris wheel of tiny amusement park Cosmo World.

Landmark Tower behind Cosmo World ferris wheel

The inside is very modern and kept in the colours of the cup noodle cup – red & white.

Check out those poles

While the first Cup Noodles came out in 1971, the first instant ramen had first been sold in a test market in 1958.
There was a small documentary about the founding history of the product and Nissin company that was actually very fascinating (and entertaining) to watch.

The founder, Andou Momofuku, was already 48 years old when he had the idea to make instant ramen. He found it inefficient that people would have to wait for so long to get ramen on the streets of post-war Tokyo, so he came up with a way to make ramen just by adding water (a process that’s easier said than done).

1971 – 1st Cup Noodles!

When he was on a trip to San Francisco in 1969, he saw people drinking coke from big cups while eating hamburgers at the same time. When he saw how people didn’t mind walking around with cups in their hands (something we do all the time nowadays, but back then it was a little bit more special), he imagined the Cup Noodle for the first time.

Funny enough, until I watched the documentary today it didn’t occur to me that getting the block of noodles into a cup could have been a real problem. However, during test runs, the noodles would eventually land on their side most of the times when dropped from above. One night, Momofuku had the idea to instead drop the cup on top of a block of noodles and then slowly turn it around with the cup – The Cup Noodle was born.

The museum had plenty of art exhibits, which you can see above. The exhibition featured every single version of cup and instant noodles ever made by the company. The wall of noodles in the last picture is an example of the different types of noodles currently sold in all sorts of countries around the world. Japanese ramen, laksa, pasta, korean noodles – their reportoire is huge.

When I was done with the museum, I continued to make my very own Cup Noodle flavour & cup design!!!
Now, what will that tourist activity cost, you may ask?

Merely 300yen for the whole experience of colouring the cup, adding ingredients and getting a cute balloon bag for transport. What a great museum to have such fair prices despite the attraction factor. Japan is great. Anyways, let’s continue with some pictures: