Ramen museum

Con-chan and I visited the Ramen museum in Shin-Yokohama. The ramen museum tries to recreate the feel of a night market, with traditional street setting and ramen shops and old-time sweets shops (similar to our mama shops) and traditional games played on the streets. It has 8-9 shops selling the different types of ramen found all over Japan.

Displays of all the different instant noodles and cup-a-noodles sold since they were first invented in the 1950s. Incidentally, the Japanese regard the invention of instant noodles as the greatest invention of that century. Haha...

I had a mini-bowl of Tonkotsu ramen from Kyushu and a special autumn-flavour...horse meat ramen! (The shops have the option of mini-bowls so that you can sample the different types of ramen, e.g. clear soy sauce ramen from Tokyo, miso ramen from Hokkaido, etc.)

My favourite...tonkotsu ramen!!! It's OISHI!!! I liked it so much that I even bought the soup stock so that I can cook it at home! :)

And my horse meat ramen...see how they cut carrots and pumpkin to make it look like autumn leaves. In case you're wondering, I think horse meat tastes like deer. This wins only in terms of presentation...I prefer the tonkotsu ramen from Kyushu. That was Con-chan's favourite too! In fact, the tonkotsu one is so popular that it had a 45-min queue!

And I shall end this entry with this very thought-provoking piece I saw in the ramen history exhibition:

It reads:

"All the raumen come in bowls.

And all the bowls have philosophy.

Shape, volume, material, colour, design...

In order to create raumen more delicious,

These bowls were meant to be selected.

They aren't mere pieces of tableware - they are the culture."

Cheem huh? (No, I don't know why they spell ramen raumen.)