Who have never eaten instant noodles? I bet almost everyone has tried it, especially cup noodles. Other than it is so easy and convenient to bring and cook it anywhere,
it is very affordable too. Just pour some hot water, wait for a few minutes, and you're ready to go. It's as easy as that, isn't it? Since we all love Instant Noodles so much, this time I am going to talk about the famous Cup Noodles Museum. This is an interactive museum opened by the Nissin Food company in Yokohama, that shows the history of instant ramen
noodles in fun and interesting way. Here, you can learn about the history of the instant noodles, and even create your own cup noodles for you to bring home as souvenir!
Although I have been living in Japan for quite some time for now, but believe me when I say this is my first time visiting Cup Noodles Museum and I was quite surprised because the entrance fee is so affordable!! It is only 500 yen for one person!
This museum is quite spacious for me and has many options for you to experience, such as My Cup Noodles Factory, Momofuku theater, cup noodles park for kids, instant noodle history cube, noodle bazaar food court, and many more. You can visit them all if you have enough time to spend here.
CREATE YOUR OWN CUP NOODLES
One of a must thing to do in this museum of course is create your own cup noodles. It costs 300 yen for a cup noodles for you to create your very own cup noodles. A little bit more expensive than a regular cup noodles that you can find in convenient store, but it is the experience that you cannot get if you just buy regular cup noodle sold at any supermarket.
Here is the area for the visitors to design their own cup noodles. Quite spacious, and also accompanied by some helpful staffs.
First thing first, you have to choose the cup on the vending machine.
You can get the cup for just 300 yen per cup
Let me show you the table to design the cup. There are some colorful markers provided for the visitors to create every design they like or what they have on their mind. You can make the cup noodle as unique as you can, don't hesitate to create any design of cup noodles you like. Now, it is time to explore my creativity and design my cup noodles!!
Tadaaa, here is my masterpiece!
This is the final look of my own made cup noodles! I drew 3 characters
from Japanese cartoon that I am sure almost everyone has ever watched :
Crayon Sinchan, Doraemon, and Chibi Maruko Chan!
Next, it is the time to select my soup seasoning
(here we can choose 1 seasoning from 4 seasonings available) and up to 4
toppings from among 12 varieties. It means we can create a new cup noodles flavor suitable with our tastebud. Cup noodles goals!!
For the seasoning, I chose to add seafood flavor because I love the seafood stock flavor, and for the topping I chose dried ebi, cheese block, negi, and hiyakko that shaped like little chick.
After choosing the seasoning and toppings, the staff will help you to seal and wrap the cup noodles, just like the one sold in supermarket and convenience stores, so that you can keep it and cook the cup noodles whenever you want to eat it. But remember to enjoy your own customized cup noodles before they are expired!! Then you can display the cup for souvenir at your home.
Design the cup, checked. Choose the toppings and seasoning, checked. Do the wrapping, checked. Now it is time to pump the "cup noodles bag" so that it will be safe for you to pack on your luggage. You even can use this cup noodles bag as sling bag. Sooo cute! :D
NOODLES BAZAAR
After strolling around and creating my own cup noodle, I decided to find something to eat. At the 4th floor, there is Noodles Bazaar called World Noodles Road. This place serves every kind of noodles from Asia such as Vietnamese pho, tom yam goong noodles from Thailand, Malaysian laksa, Korean cold ramen, Indonesian mie goreng, and some other noodles from another countries. So many different kinds of noodles with different flavors that probably will suit almost every visitors tastebuds and preference, from spicy to non spicy, sweet, sour, or savory.
You can order your meal from the vending machine here. First, just simply input the money, then choose whatever meal you want to have, after that the vending machine will print out your order ticket and return your change. After that give the ticket to the staff so that they can start preparing your ordered meal. Then you can just wait for your order to be served.
For me, I decided to order mie goreng to cure my cravings for Indonesian food. It's been a while since I last ate mie goreng, and it turned out quite good!! Tastes pretty authentic though it can't replace the real Indonesian Mie Goreng, but when you miss the taste, this is pretty decent meal. They even used Indonesian Kecap (Soy Sauce). The mie goreng costs 300 yen, which is quite affordable I can say. If you want to eat mie goreng in Tokyo, it can cost you around 900-1000 yen at a restaurant and some of them taste more like yakisoba or Japanese fried noodle than mie goreng.
After finished with the mie goreng, I decided to stroll around to find dessert. One thing that caught my eye is this cup noodle flavored soft serve ice cream! There are two flavors available, classic and curry flavors. Such an unique idea that can only be thought of by Japanese!
To make the appearance looks more like cup noodles, the ice cream is even served in a noodles cup with some of the cup noodles toppings. It costs 300 yen each cup. For me, the original one tastes more like vanilla ice cream mixed with chicken stock seasoning. It's not bad but it's only something that I would like to taste just for experience lol
INSTANT NOODLES HISTORY CUBE
Besides creating your own cup noodles, there is also instant noodles history cube where you can see instant noodle evolution in Japan from the begining until now. The History Cube also exhibits the products that are currently available in the local and international market.
After so many trial and error, the first instant noodles was invented by Momofuku Ando who is called "the father of instant ramen" in 1958, and it is called chicken ramen. At that time, people called it "magic ramen" because it can be cooked within a few minutes only. Then followed by his second invention of cup noodles on 1971.
Besided the history of instant ramen, you can also spot the wall of instant noodles all around the world too!! Well, can you spot something familiar?? Yup!! It is the famous Indomie!! One of my favorite instant noodles.
TRICK EYE PHOTO SPOT
It
wouldn't be complete visiting this museum without taking any picture.
On the other hand, besides historical information and cup noodles production process, they also have trick eye illusion photo spot for you and your friends to
take picture with cup noodle theme of course. Here's my picture with "the tiny Mrs. and Mr Jajan"
There is also a Cup Noodles Park for kids to play and learn about the manufacturing process of instant noodles in a fun way, so they will have more interesting experience to learn about the history rather than just reading the information only.
Overall I had a pretty fun experience here in Cup Noodles Museum! And I would like to recommend this place to everyone while visiting Yokohama, because I think this place is one of the highlight in this city. This also can be a suitable option for a family trip because it is very affordable and fun for kids, even for adults. You can spare around 3 until 4 hours to explore this place. Also it could be a good recommendation for you if the weather is not really good outside.
HOW TO GET THERE?
If
you are coming from Tokyo, you can took a train to get to Cup Noodles
Museum. I will guide you from Tokyo Station. So from Tokyo Station, take
the Keihin-Tōhoku Line and ride 14 stops to Sakuragichō Station. After
that, with the help of Google Maps direction, you can walk to the Cup
Noodles Museum while enjoying Yokohama's view.
For you who are interested in visiting this place, here's the map of Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum, or you can easily google :YOKOHAMA CUP NOODLES MUSEUM" for your reference.
ADDRESS = 2 Chome-3-4 Shinko, Naka Ward, Yokohama, Kanagawa 231-0001, Japan
HOURS = Opens 10 AM - Closes 6 PM ( Closes on Tuesday)
Tel = +81 45-345-0918
So, do you like to eat cup noodles? And what is your favorite cup noodles flavor? Mine is seafood flavor. That's all for this trip! Talk to you guys again on my next blog post!
This post is in collaboration with Kanagawa Prefecture.
This post is in collaboration with Kanagawa Prefecture.
