Japan Has A Dedicated Museum For Your Favorite Instant Noodles!

If you're a big fan of instant noodles or ramen, here's your chance to learn the secret of cup noodles and customize your very own ramen at the Nissin Cup Noodles Museum! :)

For those who have time to spare, this would be a great past time and experience. I learned about the museum a few years back and now I had the opportunity to finally visit it. The Nissin Cup Noodles Museum is a fun and interactive museum in Osaka Ikeda that shows the history of instant ramen noodles using a combination of exhibits and hands-on workshops.

It starts with the Instant Noodles Tunnel wherein approximately 800 decades of instant noodles are lined up to show how it grew into a global dietary culture over the years.

Then the story of Momofuku Ando's invention of instant noodles, how it grew and what it has achieved were then displayed through interactive exhibits.

There's also an interactive theater in the shape of cup noodles! Using a large-screen audio visual, it showed the inspiration and meaning behind the world's first cup-type instant noodles. After watching, my realizations include "who would have thought that a simple 'noodles in a cup' idea can go a long way"? I mean, small ideas can mean big money.

Momofuku Ando really showed his prowess through innovation so naturally some of the traces of his life like his medals, eyeglasses etc were featured in the museum too.

And for those who want to make Chicken Ramen by hand in the factory, you can enjoy the entire process of kneading, spreading, steaming and seasoning the wheat flour and drying it with the flash frying method for a fee.

The most anticipated activity is the Cup Noodles Factory where I got to DIY my own Cup Noodles! For only 300 yen, I got to design my cup, choose the soup base and 4 toppings.

Me and my siblings being competitive with our designs, even though I already know I was going to lose.

My dad trying to help me design by drawing an eye?

Showing off our masterpiece.

I chose Seafood for my soup, and for my toppings: shrimp, cheese, egg and crab meat.

Some other people's creatively made cup noodles!

After all the hard work, we got to eat our DIY cup noodles but I decided to take it home as a remembrance and just grabbed some of the readily available products in the vending machine that are not usually sold in Osaka. Itadakimasu!

Overall, it was such a unique experience and I would love to go back, try the Chicken Ramen Factory, and eat more noodles. How about you? :)

CUP NOODLES MUSEUM Address: 8-25 Masumi-cho, Ikeda-shi, Osaka 563-0041 Japan Museum hours: 10:00-18:00 (last admission 17:00) Holidays: Tuesdays (when Tuesday is a holiday, closed the following day), year end / new year holidays Website: http://www.cupnoodles-museum.jp/english

DIY Nissin Cup Noodles: 300 yen per cup. You pay for it at the vending machine, not at the reception counter.