Our eleventh entry in this blog is our trip to Cup Noodles Museum in Yokohama, Japan. We also visited this place last year but that was a weekend and very crowded. We decided to visit this year on a weekday.
This interactive museum is designed to stir the creativity and curiosity within every child and provide a rich educational experience. Through the museum’s many exhibits, you can learn about the creative thinking of Momofuku Ando, the founder of Nissin Food Products and inventor of Chicken Ramen, the world’s first instant ramen that revolutionized eating customs all over the world. Here you will gather the knowledge that inspires invention and discovery and find the creativity within you by seeing, touching, playing, eating, and having fun. -cupnoodles-museum.jp
Here is Sai, modelling around and waiting to get in.

Here is the Instant Noodles History Cube. This exhibit displays the instant ramen lineup that started with Chicken Ramen. An astounding selection of over 3,000 product packages shows how a single product introduced a half-century ago grew into a global dietary culture. -cupnoodles-museum.jp
Papa and Rei touring the instant noodles wall.

Next set of photos is the My CupNoodles Factory. Here you can create your own completely original CupNoodles package. In a cup that you design, select your favorite soup from amoung four varieties and four toppings from among 12 ingredients. Altogether, there are 5,460 flavor combinations. -cupnoodles-museum.jp
1 serving is 300 yen. Here is my sister with her finished cup noodles, her own design and her own chosen flavor combination.

There are a lot of areas to be visited in this museum. I forgot to take photos of all of them, which happens all the time, as I am very busy reading the history and in awe of the wonderful setup of the museum. Here are some photos I got from their official website (cupnoodles-museum.jp).

From top left is Momofuku’s Work Shed. This is a recreation of the work shed where Chicken Ramen, the world’s first instant ramen, was invented. Next, on top right, is the Momofuku Ando Story. The life of Ando is presented in a long panorama that combines images from his life and times. Next is the Creative Thinking Boxes (our little Rei’s favorite place). Rei loves to touch every designed box to discover what is inside it, very useful in children’s curiosity and creativity growth 🙂 Next is the Chicken Ramen Factory. You can experience the process that led to the invention of ramen by making your own from scratch, and taking it home with you. They also have the CupNoodles Park for kids to play while learning the process from making the noodles to shipping them out. And lastly, the Noodles Bazaar or the World Noodles Road. Here you can enjoy the noodle culture that has spread to every corner of the world in an ambience that is like and Asian night market.

That ends our trip to the Cup Noodle Museum. Of course we will be back, as this is Rei and Sai’s first museum visited.