Day 79: Masters Of Cup Noodles

Today was a highly anticipated day on the "Sophia and Adam quit their jobs and go travelling" calendar. It was Cup Noodles Museum Day. This museum is over in Yokohama which is not a very long train ride from Tokyo and celebrates the wonder that is Cup Noodles.

As a lover of the occasional Cup Noodle I wanted to check out this creative museum and was pretty damn excited to make my own Cup Noodles masterpiece. Yes, you can make your own Cup Noodles complete from choosing your own toppings and designing your own packaging. [insert overexcited clapping here]

FYI, it costs ¥500 per person to enter the museum and an extra ¥300 to make your own Cup Noodles. A small price to pay for the glory of making your own.

This was the staircase leading up to the museum where you're greeted by an oversized Cup Noodle and his chicken-y friend. And this is me posing awkwardly next to them.

First stop, the My CUPNOODLES Factory where we were set to make our own concoctions. These are the design stations where you can draw on your Cup Noodles cup AKA masterpieces. We honestly thought there might be scouts in the crowd ready to pick out our amazing artworks and give us jobs as Cup Noodles designers. Okay, not really but one can dream.

In true Japanese style you select your cup from a vending machine. 

*decisions, decisions...*

After designing our cups (we only had about 40 minutes to do so, which actually goes quite quickly) we moved to the Noodling Station* where noodles were added to our cups. The staff member places your cup upside down on this machine and you turn the crank to get the noodles to fall into your cup.

*not its actual name.

Here are the topping station you get to choose which toppings you want. It was overwhelming. What if I made the worst Cup Noodle flavour combination of all time? Would they throw me out and tell me never to return? Would I shame the Cup Noodles name?

Pictured here: Old mate sick of my indecisiveness.

Just choose the damn flavours already he was probably thinking. Or maybe he was thinking are you really choosing THAT flavour combo? Rookie. I ended up choosing a seafood base with crab, shallots, corn (of course) and fish cakes with little faces on them 100% because they had little faces on them.

Sealing our masterpieces.

And we're done! Cup Noodles glory is ours... To take home... And eat.

After the joy that was making our own Cup Noodles, we visited the other parts of the museum which had some pretty cool exhibits, take for example this crazy sculpture.

There was a room that featured every design of Cup Noodles that ever existed. AMAZING.

We left Cup Noodles Museum and headed out to a grey Yokohama. There is this amusement park right in the middle of everything which actually looked awesome (it was currently closed). They have this rollercoaster which disappears into water! Next time, Yokohama.

They've also got a colourful theme park lining the banks of the river too which are pastel and bright compared to the grey buildings behind it.

We decided Yokohama might be a good place to find some Japanese whisky because there are less whisky mad tourists in this part of town and we were right. We purchased a couple of bottles of the somewhat rare Nikka Taketsuru 17 year from a department store which Adam was over the moon about so it was a bit of a winning day all round. Cup Noodles and whisky... A winning combination?

Heading back to the train station I had to take a photo of these friendly fruity fellows.

And we're back to Shibuya! There is some crazy construction going on at the moment and it feels like it's been going on for years. There are some men down there from what I assume is the company seeing the progress firsthand.

Hungry for noodles (I wonder why?) we went to one of our favourite tsukemen places in Tokyo – Yasube in Shibuya. There's usually a line but because we went at one of those weird times, we were almost alone in the restaurant.

They've actually become slightly more English friendly since we were last there as now they have little signs to tell you can order a free topping (if you get a small serving of noodles) and then when your food comes they give you some instructions on how to eat tsukemen.

I love the thick noodles here. We always order the small serving of noodles (which gets you a free topping) and share a plate of sides so we get to try everything. The tsukemen costs the same amount here regardless of what size noodles you order, but make sure you don't get greedy and order the large just because you can and then don't finish it. It's apparently a bad look.

Anyway, I love this place and no doubt I'll be back again eating their chewy noodles and getting the broth all over myself.