Cup Noodles Museum in Yokohama

I recently visited Cup Noodles Museum in Minato-mirai, Yokohama City with my two friends, Brandi and Stephanie. The field trip was part of our orientation class, which I had to take to get my drivers’ license. We had to take the train to and back the base on the same day without getting lost. From Sagami-Otsuka train station, we took the train via Sotetsu Line to Yokohama and from Yokohama transferred lines to Minato-mirai and got off Minato-mirai station. From there it was about 10-15 minute walk to Cup Noodles Musuem, right past Cosmo World and across World Porters mall.

Entrance fee is only 500 yen and if you want to ‘make your own cup noodles’ you pay an additional 300 yen. The museum’s lobby was very spacious and modern. The atmosphere was very simple, white and somewhat futuristic. We entered a hall called Instant Noodles History Cube that exhibited all the cup noodles sold in the market from the very beginning up to present. The first cup noodles was invented by Momofuku Ando in 1958. All the while it reminded me of college when instant cup noodles was my staple food.

The Cup Noodle Momofuku Theater was next. The guides were very polite and nice enough to give us English translation headsets for us to understand the whole presentation. I learned that during the war, Momofuku was deeply affected by the depression that the whole country was in. There was no food and people are hungry. Ramen is too hard to prepare. So he decided to invent instant ramen or cup noodles. The presentation is very fun, easy to understand and most of all not boring.

After that was a series of interactive exhibits like the Momofuku’s Work Shed, and creative illustrations of his adventures. The exhibits will entertain you and will educate you as well. Now it was time for us to go to the Cup Noodles factory and make our own instant cup noodles. First you take a cup from the vending machine and then we sanitized our hands. Sealing our cups, we proceeded to design our cup and personalize it with colorful markers. My two friends were very creative and they drew so well! Then we helped the worker seal the noodles in each of our cups, chose the flavor and seasonings of our cup noodles and they sealed it all in for us. After that we put our cup noodles in their little inflatable bag! It was so much fun! And you can actually eat the cup noodles you made within 1 month!

All that made us hungry so we decided to check out their Noodles Bazaar and we all chose Italian noodles a.k.a. pasta! It was pretty good but a little small for us—that is something we have to get used to in Japan! After the good meal, we were ready to go back home. I gained not only lots of fun but also two gorgeous friends!

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