Instant Ramen Museum

Hello everyone back in the cold and miserable weather of San Francisco! Tis I, Yuki Fujita reporting from Osaka! Hello Mom… :D! Walking out to the humidity every morning is always a shock after spending a night in a comforting air-conditioned room. I’ve found out the hard way that in Japan during the summer, you sweat in places you never knew you could.

During our train ride to the Instant Ramen Museum, as always more than half of the group was asleep. My mission for the trip was to take a picture of every person while they were napping and I accomplished it all thanks to Steven’s failed resistance.

As we arrived in beautiful Ikeda city, Sensei’s stylish, sweet mother greeted us in the train station with a warm smile. We walked down only a couple of blocks but again, Cherry and I ended up in the back. As we entered the museum, we were greeted with the friendliest welcoming and a cool AC. We waited in line and I was paired up with Jennifer L. (a.k.a. LaLa).

We walked up to the second floor and received an apron and a bandana with the main symbol of Cup Noodles, a cute, cartoon chicken on it. Some looked like factory workers and the others looked like housewives.

We were instructed to combine the flour and oil mixture and mix it thoroughly in a circular motion. Then our instructor told us (all in Japanese with translations from Toyomi) to make a ball with the dough and put pressure onto it to flatten it. Our next step was to put it into a machine 10 times to flatten the dough and I let Jennifer with her muscular arms to do most of the work.

In the meantime we had the chance to design our own cover with markers to make it our own. We then proceeded to flatten the dough more until it was the perfect size and shredded it into noodles and cut them into 20cm strips. After, they took them away to pre-boil and gave us the crumbs to taste. Supa Oishii! They wrapped them up and gave us each our own individual noodles that we made.

We also got to check out the hundreds of different kinds of instant cup noodles they had in their museum and created our own flavored ramen! Yay! Since I am a big fan of noodles, making my own was a dream of mine. With a choice of flavor, toppings and our hand-made cups, makes me water at the mouth just thinking about it. We finished up the day by riding the train back to Osaka while Sensei, his mother, and Hadrian went to Kobe.

After we arrived back at the hotel, some of us tried to watch a scary Japanese movie in the dark on Steven's laptop. It was pretty much a disaster due to the lag on the videos and too many were either afraid or tired. Everyone was exhausted from our trip so most napped while me and Jennifer To had some bonding time. Teehee! :) Anyway, our stomachs started to grumble and craving some delicious Japanese food. Toyomi, both Jennifer's and I went to the populated part of Osaka to shop and grab some Takoyaki. Koodos to the man making it in the freakishly hot weather and still working his tail off and going as quick as I have ever seen.

Random note, I was amazed me most was how many Korean people there were. Okie Dokie then, thanks for reading it even though it will be arriving a couple of days late.

Peace outside guys! Yuki-chan desu!

P.S. I'm sorry but I'm going crazy due to the heat!