Ramen Museum, Bullet Train - Day Three
Once we made it back to the Odawara train station, we realized the
bullet train from Odawara stops in Shin-Yokohama. The
Yokohama Ramen Museum
is only a short walk away from the Shin-Yokohama station. Where
to eat dinner was decided. The Ramen Museum is definitely my kind
of museum. It has one story of exhibits about ramen and two stories
which contain 9 ramen shops (8 permanent and 1 special guest). The
noodle shop floors are a reproduction of the Shitamachi area of Tokyo
circa 1958. 1958 is a major milestone in ramen history since that
marks the invention of instant noodles. It's also roughly the time
ramen shops started spreading like crazy in Japan. Somewhere I had
seen that the Hokkaido-style Sumire was the current trendy place
so we decided to try their noodles. Ordering was a bit tricky since
you order by buying a ticket from a vending machine out front.
Normally, this is ok since there will either be pictures or numbers
referencing plastic food. No such luck here, just buttons with
Japanese characters Sophie couldn't read. So we stood there
scratching our heads until some other people showed up and ordered
and we just ordered what appeared to be the most popular dish.
We had never had this style ramen before and it was a bit of a
surprise. It came with diced pork instead of the usual slices.
But the biggest surprise was the soup which was much different than
the regular Tokyo style. It's much thicker with an oil slick on top.
The noodles themselves were delicious and the soup was also very tasty,
if a bit of a guilty pleasure with all that oil. The museum charges
a Y300 admission fee and each bowl of noodles was Y900 for a total
of about US$11 per person. I look forward to returning and trying
all of the other shops someday.
One of the fringe benefits of being at a smaller bullet train station
is that not all of the trains will stop there. It's quite a sight
to see the train blow through the station and then feel the
shockwave from the train. Anyways, after eating our fill of noodles
we strolled back to the station. After some major confusion while
trying to buy bullet train tickets from a machine instead of a
person, we eventually got our tickets to Tokyo station. While
the non-stop trip from Tokyo to Odawara with a reserved seat was
about US$35, the return trip with non-reserved seats was about
$17 to Yokohama and another $13 to Tokyo. While the train fares
certainly add up, it's probably better to compare them to business
class airfare rather than some subway which makes them a pretty
good deal.
Dinner at Sumire in the Ramen Museum.
Wall-o-instant noodles
Ramen Museum
Bullet train at Tokyo Station.
Sophie showing off a huge dorayaki we got in Tsukiji. Only Y100 ($1)!
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