The Cup Noodle Museum

     In Yokohama there's a cup noodle museum  Not just a regular cup noodle museum, no no.  THE Cup Noodle Museum about the man and product that introduced instant noodles to the world!!!  And what a story that is!!! It's about a man who came from nothing and saw people starving and lining up on the streets for food after the war.  He wanted an affordable and easy food for these people to eat.  And so he worked in his shed an discovered that if you fry the noodles the moisture in them dries up and when you add hot water to them  they plump up again.  Genius!!! And so he toiled and created these noodles for people.  Then competitors came and tried to steal his idea.  He was upset.  But THEN he was approached by some food industry people who asked him to spearhead the Cup Noodle market for the world.  He agreed and shared his secret to the competitors.  Then he travelled to America and met with people to bring the product there.  They ate it but didn't understand chopsticks and recommended using a fork instead.  "A fork? Why didn't I think of that?  It had never occurred to me!"  Then they found it wasn't very convenient and so broke the noodles apart and put them in a cup and added water.  Voila!!! Cup Noodles!!!!

     The film we watched is full of inspirational ideas like thinking outside the box, no man is weak, anything is possible, blah blah blah.  Pretty serious stuff if you check it out for a noodle museum.  It was AWESOME!!! I felt like I could invent anything!!!!

     The museum has a lot of cool things to check out.  They replicated his shed where the creation was created.  There was also a noodle bazaar with different noodle dishes from around the world.  It looks like a genuine town in Taiwan or something (my friend confirmed this as she's been :)  And I had my first pho since being in Japan and it was great.  I want pho so bad now!  There's an amazing tree-shadow show.  It's in a dark room with teeny trees set up on a platform.  It looks pretty unimpressive until the lights start moving.  Through the trees these little flashlights move up and down the rows creating a forest on the wall and as the light travels the main tree gets bigger and bigger.  Then the sides lights come on and the forest starts moving and evolving.  I didn't do it justice in this explanation at all but it was an incredible show.  You should youtube it if you can.

     Then we went down to MAKE noodles.  Technically we decorated the cup and then put noodles in it but it was COOL!!! Especially the final touch...we wait in line, buy a cup, and then get to decorate with these great markers that work like paint.  We went nuts and didn't talk for several minutes concentrating on our "artwork" LOL.  Then we got to "put" noodles in the cup.  We gave our cup to the person who puts it over the noodle nest and we get to turn the crank to rotate the cup upside down for the noodles to fall perfectly inside.  This idea of putting the noodles in upside down was another genius idea from the man himself :)  Then we chose our flavour and fillings.  I chose bacon, corn, something else, and chicken.  The chicken was dehydrated and  shaped and coloured like the little chicken mascot, too cute!

     THEN the best part and the ONLY reason I wanted the dumb cup noodles in the first place - I don't even like cup noodles! Hahaha!!! We place the sealed cup in a plastic bag and inflate it with a pump.  The bag swells up and it looks like the cup is floating in this bubble bag!!!! AMAZING!!!! Then you can tie a string on it and wear it like a bag - which we did!!!  I was ecstatic!!!

     There were some pretty great designs on the bags, too.  One guy did "The Re-creation" on the cup.  This terrible picture of Jesus that an old woman did b/c she ruined the original and painted over it.  It was perfect!!! My friend got a picture with and and made a new facebook friend, hahaha!

    I don't know if I'll ever eat the noodles.  They expire in 1 month but then I have to puncture the bag and lose it forever.  I don't know if I can do that...it's too cool!  Maybe one day...