Ramen Museum

I finally did it. I went to see the oh-so-famous Ramen Museum. If you ever try to google Yokohama, Japan one of the most popular results (for reasons I still don't understand) is this Museum. Wednesday (February 4) was another day off school. Due to the tests I explained in an earlier post. I made plans with my friend Rinna to go there. She thought it was funny that I wanted to go. It seems like everyone here knows about the museum, but nobody has actually gone to it...

In front of the "Shin Yokohama Raumen Museum"

Anyway, I met Rinna at Shin-Yokohama station, which I discovered has bullet trains! I'll get to ride one some day. It was my first time to this station. We set off to find the museum. She had brought with her a really cool little book of maps of different sections of the city with lots of details. (I liked it so much I asked her where she got it, and was planning on going to get myself one. The next day she brought it to school and gave it to me! Rinna is so nice!) The museum was, I'll be honest, slightly disappointing. When you walk in you see the gift shop and hidden behind that is the short history of instant ramen. That was fun to look at. The main attraction is downstairs. It is a replication of a section of Tokyo in 1958. The life size replication goes around the outside of the room, and then down in the middle area is the "ramen restaurant mall." There are 9 different ramen shops in this little area.

Probably the best part of the museum... :) I'm not sure what it is there for...

1958 Tokyo looked just like this!

When you have 9 ramen shops in an enclosed area that has poor ventelation (because it is in the basement) the smell is pretty overpowering. Each shop is of a different region's ramen, so they are all different flavors. We ate Fukuchan Ramen. It was good, but not the best ramen I've ever had. On the way out, we decided to do the ramen purikura. It was fun.

The middle area with all the ramen shops.

So, the museum itself wasn't that great, but it was tons of fun to go with Rinna. After that, we decided to go to the Nogeyama Daibutsuen (Zoo). It is a free zoo! I didn't even know about it until Rinna told me about it. We looked at all the different animals and had a good time talking. I'm pretty sure that my favorite part of the zoo were the cute trees shaped like different animals at the entrance. I know there's a word for that, but I can't remember it... Topiary! (I had to google it. haha)

Topiary!

This was the petting zoo. It was really icky... just mice, chickens, and chicks. The chicks were cute.

This was really cool! Rinna noticed that there was a female peacock near, and when it walked away this poor guy's feathers all sank down and then wandered after her. It was kind of funny...

After the zoo we went home to have dinner with our families. I had a really nice day with Rinna. It was so fun to get to know her more and talk with her one on one. Sometimes I feel like even though I have lots of friends at school, I don't really them that well. That's probably because I don't. Everyone is really nice, but its hard to make really close friends when you can't communicate fully with them. I hope it will get better now though. :)