Cup of Noodles Museum & Cosmo World Ferris Wheel

Last weekend, Bern and I went back to Yokohama to check out the Cup of Noodles Museum. You would think that the building would be in the actual shape of a cup of noodles... but it wasn't. C'mon?! haha

 

Instant Ramen was created by Momofuku Ando in 1958. He thought of the idea after 

World War II when there was a food shortage in Japan. Ando went on to invent Cup of Noodles in 1971 when he took a trip to the U.S. and noticed that Americans were putting the instant noodles into a cup. The first exhibit of the museum shows the evolution of his creation and how it sparked a culinary phenomenon.  

 

 

We then watched a short movie on the history of Instant Ramen before heading up to the third floor to make our very own Cup of Noodles from start to finish. First, we had to buy an empty cup for only 300 Yen ($3) then go to a table full of markers where we designed the outside of the package.

 

 

Bern's design was more avant-garde while mine was just of the Japanese rising sun (I'm definitely not the artistic one out of the group!) Afterwards, we went to the first station which is where you have to turn a wheel in order to place the cup over the uncooked noodles.

Once the noodles were in there, we stepped over to the second station where we got to customize both the soup base and toppings.

The third & forth stations deal with the actual packaging of the cup of noodles.

Bern and I needed a quick pick me up afterwards so we headed to their noodle food-court where people could buy small portions of noodle dishes from around the world. We tried noodles from Korea, Vietnam, & Kazakhstan (Very Nice!!!!) in addition to the original chicken flavor instant ramen.    

 

 

Our sponsor, Lizzie, suggested we see Yokohama at night with all the lights so we did some shopping at the local mall, ate dinner, and then headed over to Cosmo World to ride the big ferris wheel. As the viewing pod got higher and higher in the sky, the wind started to really pick up which really freaked us out a bit (me more so than Bern). But despite all that, we did get some nice views of the city of Yokohama and Tokyo in the distance. What a great way to spend a Saturday!