wake.eat.sleep

After a fairly busy day at TAF 2010 (Part One, Part Two), I built up quite an appetite. It was a perfect time to make that long awaited trip to the Raumen Museum located in Shin-Yokohama!

(Please don't confuse this with the instant ramen museum in Osaka.)

Now many of us have made it through some frugal times in college by enjoying ramen in its microwaveable form:

Or maybe you got classy, and used the version you cooked on the stove:

No my friend, we're taking ramen.

So, I thought I'd hop out to Yokohama and visit the museum.

Didn't you say the museum was in Shin-Yokohama? Are they that close to each other?

...

Er, so I eventually made it to Shin-Yokohama and went to the museum.

Walking into museum deposits you into their gift shop and some exhibits (mostly in Japanese) on the history of ramen, the differences across the region, and various cooking and eating utensils. While that was somewhat interesting, my hunger got the better of me and I went straight to the lower levels, where you are greeted with a recreation of an old neighborhood in Tokyo. The best part about the museum is that they've invited 9 different restaurants from restaurants across Japan which represent the regional variations when it comes to ramen. I was hoping to rock out at least 2 bowls, maybe even 3. Four if I was insane.

I wanted to get the ball rolling on my ramen eating, so I quickly ducked into here.

I hopefully ordered the correct item and correct size ramen based on poor reading of the kanji on the vending machine.

YUM! The broth was great, and I quickly scarfed it down to move on to another bowl at a different place.

Will I do a better job this time? I think I'm ordering something with negi (onions) in it.

Crap.

It's nothing BUT onions. Haha! I like onions, but I at least wanted a slice of pork in it. Oh well! This was tasty as well, but I kept on feeling that with at least a sliver of meat it would have been great. Unfortunately, that large bowl took a lot of time to mostly get through. As I was running to try to order a third bowl, it turns out that I just missed the cutoff for the last orders of the night.

Alas! The restaurants were closed, but I was able to browse the gift shop upstairs to look for a small memento to take back.

I did want to explore Yokohama's Chinatown, and even take a peek at their Ferris Wheel, but fatigue was setting in, and I had a long day ahead of me on Sunday.

Enjoy this small set of pictures from Yokohama and Shin-Yokohama!

-- Yokohama end --