After our son, Brian, graduated from college he and his roommate bought a house in South Minneapolis with the intention of fixing it up and flipping it.  Halloween completely slipped their minds so when goblins started knocking they gave out what many recent graduates, low on cash have, packages of instant Ramen noodles.   They had cases of the stuff. 

“Trick or Treat!”

Because they both had day jobs the house flipping took longer than they anticipated, but the next year on Halloween they had candy ready.  As they handed it out one kid said

“Gee, last year we got Ramen.”

Ramen is not only a staple of Americans trying to stretch a buck, but it is the favorite meal, in a recent poll, of Japanese people, more popular than sushi, miso soup, or tempura.  And yet tempura has something to do with Ramen.

In Yokohama the thing Gori, my Japanese student friend, said I should see is the Ramen or “Cup Noodle” Museum.  My iPhone told me that the museum was a 20-minute walk from the ship.  But it was hot outside.  We started our walk feeling hot because the night before the air conditioning in part of the ship (the part where our state room was located) had failed. Guest Services offered us a fan but then rescinded the offer, they had given them all out before we had called. 

The temperature inside the ship was warm but not nearly as hot as it was outside, 94 degrees with high humidity. My iPhone says “feels like 107^o.”  For a moment I was tempted to stay inside the cool cruise terminal and look at the exhibits there.

The 20-minute walk took us roughly two hours.  OK we stopped as several park benches in the shade along Yokohama’s Marine Walk. 

We also stopped in the red brick warehouse (Similar to the one in Hakodate) which has shops and a food court where we had a Pepsi and stopped to talk with one our domino player friends, Katherine, who showed off the fans she bought in Chinatown.  

The food court has no American fast-food franchises but did have a local Hawaiian Burger stand.  Most of the food was Japanese, seafood, noodles, sushi and shichimi, with plastic models of the food displayed for you to look at before eating.  We were tempted to stay in the air-conditioning but went out into the heat for the last few hundred meters to the Cup Noodle Museum.

The Cup Noodles Museum is more of an activity center than museum. 

You can take one track where you go into the kitchen and make your own chicken ramen, kneading steaming and deep frying them.  You can take another track beginning with already dried noodles, add your own spices, decorate your own cup and take home a custom ramen souvenir.

There is Cup Noodled Park, an indoor playground for kids. 

There’s a “thinking outside the box” activity center.  Or you could just go through the exhibits and learn about the history of Ramen and its inventor, Momofuku Ando, including a mockup of his backyard ramen workshop.

After the second world war Momofuku realized that Japanese needed cheap, and quick to prepare food.  They loved noodles so he started working on ways to dry them for quick rehydration.  He came up with frying them tempura style, which dehydrated them, but left them pocked with tiny holes that would allow quick rehydration.  Originally, he made them in blocks, but for the American Market he needed something different, so he put them in a cup, you pour in boiling waters and stir.  They came with different spices and bullion stocks, and you could eat them with a fork rather than chop sticks.  This was all explained in a cute Japanese Animation film.

There were other things, like a terrace with great views…

and, of course, the glorification of the founder, fair enough.

The place was packed this Friday afternoon full of both families and school groups.  This is the perfect field trip for a class group, you learn something, you keep active, you have fun, and you come home with a souvenir cup of noodles.