Cup Noodles and instant ramen is one of those things that are staples when it comes to emergency meals or quick easy meals for bachelors, students, teenagers, or for those that go camping and see cooking as only heating up water. Wherever we’ve lived in the world, there was always access to instant noodles. So why pass up on a visit to the museum? 😉

You find the Cup Noodles museum in Japan, of course, the birth place of instant noodles. They have two locations – Yokohama and Osaka. We were in the Tokyo area at this time, so we decided to take a quick train ride to the museum in Yokohama (less than an hour south of Tokyo).

It’s quite barebones when you enter the building – minimalist, as one can expect in Japan. There’s a huge lobby with a grand staircase as well as the typical gift shop on this side. Apart from museums and parks in the US, they don’t force you to walk through the gift shop to get to the main attraction. The gift shop has a few cute items, but nothing that screams “buy me” really.

Take a few quick photos and head up the stairs, through the ticket agent, and you get to the main area. There you’ll find three different sections. One is for making your own Cup Noodles. Yes, you get an empty cup that you first get to design to your liking. When I say design, you sit at a table and draw the cup with a wide variety of Sharpie pens.

Then you move on to the counter where you select your ingredients. You can pretty much be as creative as you want, picking ingredients such as shrimp, corn, egg, etc. You also select what kind of seasoning you want. Mine ended up being a spicy seafood variant. There’s no eating at this place. You move to the next station where you shrink wrap your own specially made Cup Noodles. They also provide air cushions so you can pack it safely in your bag.

The other section of this museum is a kitchen where you can actually make noodles from scratch. If you are into cooking, this might be a fun option for you. I wish we had more time to do this when we were there, but because of dinner obligations we had to rush past and go onto the last section – the more traditional museum section – where they display various noodles, the timeline of their history, as well as information about their involvement with NASA and space travel

Ok, that’s all folks. It’s not a very time consuming museum, so if you are in the area and an spare a few hours in the day, I’d recommend a visit. Specially if you are an instant noodle fan like us.