The Cup Noodles Museum might have been one of my bigger disappointments in Tokyo. Maybe that’s on me for being really excited about going to a museum all about Cup Noodles.
It’s not great. Though the whole thing is very well designed and quite slick, there just isn’t much there.
There’s a room with the various labels for all of the Cup Noodles products over the years. That might have been the highlight, sadly enough.
There’s another area that goes over the history of the company, but sadly, it’s all in Japanese.
One of the more interesting things here is a replica of the shed where Momofuku Ando invented instant noodles. That was pretty neat.
And then, of course, there’s the area where you can make your own customized cup of Cup Noodles.
This costs 300 yen (on top of the 500 yen it costs to get into the museum). It feels like this should come with the ticket, but I guess an extra 300 isn’t going to break the bank.
Once you buy your cup, you can bring it to a table where you can draw a design on it (yes, in case it’s not obvious, this whole process is clearly aimed at children).
I kept it pretty simple with a smiley face.
Then you bring your cup over to another area where you can pick your seasonings and toppings from behind glass. I was sort of hoping I could just scoop in whatever I wanted willy nilly, but you have to tell them what you want and they do it for you (with a limit of one seasoning and four toppings).
I went with curry seasoning, with shrimp, cheese, scrambled egg, and kimchi.
I ate it when I got back to the Airbnb; it wasn’t bad. The curry seasoning had a decent amount of spice and some creaminess (I think the cheese melting into it probably helped in this regard). The little shrimps actually managed to retain some texture, and the egg bits weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be. There’s no mistaking it for anything but instant noodles, but it was okay for what it was.
Location: 2-chōme-3-４ Shinkō, Naka-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 231-0001
How to find it: It’s an enormous building; it’s impossible to miss.