Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum

There are usually two reasons why anyone would end up in the salaryman’s paradise that is Shin Yokohama — a live concert at Yokohama Arena, or a sporting event at Nissan Stadium.

But there is one more reason, and it’s located on a side street, with a red bowl out in front, chopsticks lifting noodles up and down.

Once you go through the main exit of the train station, you’ll walk up onto an elevated pedestrian roundabout, a hodoukyo, or a compass-rose-floating sidewalk. After a five-minute walk, you’ll arrive at the Shin Yokohama Raumen Museum.

Eating at the museum

The title ‘museum’ is misleading, so if you are interested in historical exhibits, place that desire on the back burner and enter this exalted 1958 food court with an empty stomach. This was the year Japan found a way to invent an ‘instant’ Ramen noodle, and mass international distribution soon followed.

After you pay a ¥300 entrance fee, you go through the doors and see a nationally-represented ramen gift shop. A salute to Showa-era branding awaits, but if you are too hungry to care, you’ll need to keep moving toward the back of the room, bypassing a somewhat random miniature race car track, where you can challenge your friends to a ¥200 duel of “slot-cars”. It’s good for a 5-10 minute distraction, but the art of the museum is situated two floors below.

On the bottom floor, you are greeted by around a dozen ramen shops from all over the country, all with storefronts that bring back that late 1950’s era of progress. If it’s available, go for the highly unobtainable Rishiri Ramen Miraku, a wavy noodle with an edgy soy sauce and kelp from Rishiri Island, off the coast of Hokkaido.

For more information, GaijinPot writer Megan Kitt wrote about her experience at the museum here.