Ramen Museums - Tokyo Intro: Experience #30 of 55

June 15, 2020

Ramen Museums - Tokyo Intro: Experience #30 of 55

There are two ramen museums in Yokohama, a little over a half hour south of Tokyo on the train. These are the Nissin Cup Noodle Museum and the Yokohama Ramen Museum. No special passes needed to get there, just a slightly more expensive ride on regular trains. If you use a PASMO or SUICA card to get around, which is recommended, just add some yen to those as you will use it anyway.

Yokohama Ramen Museum

Inside the Yokohama Ramen Museum and ramen shops area.

My trip to the museums in more detail.

Both places allow you to expand your experience with ramen beyond eating it, although you can still eat real ramen at each museum. Both museums can be easily done in a day and are must sees if you are a big ramen fan.

The Yokohama Ramen museum has displays about the history and cooking of ramen, but it is a gourmet ramen food court at its heart. The place is set up to invoke a real sense of nostalgia for the Showa era boom days with fake sunsets included. There is a detailed 1950s decorated street that circles the central food court where most of the ramen shops are. It is a fun walk with sound effects and even a vintage candy shop to visit. The ramen shops are located all around it and you order and pay for your ramen from ticket machines. The ramen shops here serve the real thing from restaurants invited to participate here from around Japan.
The Cup Noodle Museum is more fun out of the two by allowing you to make your own Cup Noodle as a souvenir and teaching you all about instant noodles. The room showing the hundreds of different types of instant noodles manufactured by Nissin in the last 50+ years is really cool. While it is a museum promoting a corporate brand, Nissin invented instant noodles in the form of Chikin Ramen in 1958, and then invented the cup of noodle in 1971. Over a 100 billion packages of instant noodles are consumed every year around the world. There is a brief movie about the invention of instant noodles, the cup noodle making experience, a Chikin ramen making class (pre-registration required), a ramen gift shop, and a noodle bazaar serving ramen from around Asia.