What most Egyptians don’t know is that there are many kinds of museums; not all of them display antiques or art. There are various ones around the world that actually have to do with traditional food. Maybe some of them are lesser-known or you haven't seen before, such as the Museums of noodles in Japan.
In this regard, you may expect this Asian country to have only one museum for such a traditional food, but Japan actually has two museums dedicated to Japanese ramen: one in Yokohama and one in Osaka.
The Cup Noodles Museum in Yokohama
This museum is big and looks strange from the inside (like a train tunnel), but it's one of the most educational places when it comes to a cup of noodles.
Located in Yokohama, Japan, the so-called museum is indeed a little art exhibit and a shop at the same time.
Visitors in Japan can spend a whole day there, as there are many exhibitions to see and activities to do: from the Chicken Ramen and Cup Noodles factories (in the latter factory, they get to create their own cup design and choose their favorite soup flavor) to the Momofuku Theater and the Noodles Bazaar where they get to taste all kinds of noodles from around the world, with a spice of history and background on how the noodles and Japanese ramen became a famous meal.
The Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum
One of the oldest and renowned noodles museums known is the Shin-Yokohama ramen museum, which was was founded on March 6th, 1994.
Similarly, you will find some types of noodles that vary in thickness as well as varieties of the soup, and toppings include naruto fish cakes, chashu pork, half-boiled eggs, seaweed, and much more.
According to Japanese food historians, Yokohama’s Chinatown is considered to be the home of Japan’s earliest ramen shops.
The Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum is also known as the Yokohama Ramen Museum features a large food court decorated to look as if you’re outside in the evening in a 1950s Japanese food district.
It is also unlike a contemporary museum and gives you a real feel of the vibes in the post-war period.
Moreover, this frick food museum could almost be a historical monument for the Japanese culinary culture.
The ground floor has a number of small ramen restaurants where you can either order full-size or small-size ramen dishes.
First, the visitors choose the restaurant in which they would like to chill out and eat. Then they purchase a ticket for their chosen meal at a ticket machine outside the restaurant.
In the same context, they will also receive a flyer with details on the different flavors that are available, some of which are from regions very far from Yokohama and might not be as readily available outside the museum, sometimes even as far as Hakata in Kyushu and Sapporo in Hokkaido.
Indeed, the Japanese museum even features ramen cuisines from outside Japan, such as Germany, France, and the United States.
Once the visitors have had their fill of ramen, there is also a cafe that sells Hokkaido ice cream and a shop selling snakes and retro Japanese candy.
Upstairs, the museum visitors will find a souvenir shop and some ramen displays, and they can even put together their own pack to take home and make their own customized ramen with!
It's worth mentioning that Japanese ramen came about when Chinese immigrants, many of whom would have entered the country via Yokohama, brought the wheat noodle (as opposed to buckwheat soba noodles) dish to the country in the 19th-century. Nowadays, people eat it at every meal in Japan.
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