Ramen Museum

Maybe it shouldn't be surprising there is a museum dedicated to ramen.  The Japanese love and are proud of ramen, and it has quite a cult following: enthusiasts scour the country looking for unique and exceptional bowls of noodly goodness.  In a Japanese poll in 2000, instant ramen was voted the #1 invention of the 20th century.  So why not a museum?  And really, Americans shouldn't be laughing--I know for a fact there is a Jello-O museum in New York, and a Spam museum in Wisconsin.  Glass houses, people.  Glass houses.

So we went to Yokohama to see this ramen museum, for some reason called "Raumen Museum."  I can't find out why, just that is was misspelled on purpose, according the the website.

This ticket-taker was much friendlier than the picture shows.
 

Ground floor: all signs and displays written in Japanese, and I'm sure the tale of ramen is quite gripping, but we didn't get to read it.  We did see some old ramen tools:

And a cross-section of ramen bowls, which apparently was very pivotal in the development of current ramen:

And a diagram of some of the good stuff that can go in a bowl of ramen:

Notice I didn't stress too much about cutting off part of the words.  Who was going to read them?

But, oh, the basement.  This part in itself might be worth the trip:  two-story, full-scale recreation of 1958 Tokyo.  In 1958, Momofuku Ando invented instant noodles, which made ramen easy for people to make at home (although, really, that dry brick of super-saltiness is so lousy and one-dimensional by comparison), so they have built the rest of the museum to look like Tokyo from that year, and filled it with nine restaurants serving 26 kinds of ramen from different regions in Japan, and a candy store and an ice cream parlor.  So cool!

Heading down to the first level of basement, which runs around the outside of the second story of these buildings.




You buy tickets for what you want at the vending machine outside each restaurant.  Guessing that's not authentic to the time period, but it is common at many places today.  Give the ticket to the waitress, and after you eat you can just leave.  No tipping in Japan. 




The first place we went to eat.  Pretty yummy.

Mini bowl of shoyu ramen (soy sauce) with pork, green onion and square of nori.

Close-up of the ticket machine.

Down the "alley" to the next place.

Clever way to disguise the elevator: make it look like an onsen (public bath), complete with lockers.  We even heard splashing water sounds playing in the background. 

Candy store.  

  

Bummer of an outfit to have to wear to work.  Not sure if he's supposed to be a clown or just raggedy.

And I'm REALLY not sure what the heck these scary doll trading cards are, but no way would I buy them.  I'd be having creepy Asian-Chucky-doll nightmares.

 This is where I get busted taking a sneaky picture of strangers. 

Cool old Vespa and mailbox. Lots of details to make it seem authentic, including overhead propeller airplane noises.  

Oh yes, and this was playing in the background at one shop:

So, after the first level, you can head down to the bottom, which is the street level of the city.

And I so wish I could read these signs!  Being illiterate is really a pain.

The second restaurant we tried.  Big line waiting outside looked promising.

Our tickets.  The two "words" at the top, like three diagonal lines and two horizontal lines, say "mee-nee" for mini bowls.  

 

You can get a year's pass to this place, and it was obvious many people were there on their lunch break from work. 

Sometimes you dunk the plain noodles into the broth.  I have no idea why.  The noodles got cold.

This one had a smoky fish broth that I didn't really care for.  The white disk with the pink swirl is a fish cake and tastes like nothing. 

What's missing here?  NAPKINS.  Seriously, the war is over.  You can get paper now.  Please supply paper napkins. 



Ramen is serious business.  Just ask this guy.  No idea why his picture was in the museum, but safe to bet he was important to ramen.

Ramen may be serious, but chopsticks can be fun.


 

So, after all that ramen, we still ate at our favorite place the next day, and it was DELICIOUS.  Seriously, come try it.