Is it a food court or a museum?
Founded in 1994, their website touts they are the world's first ramen-themed amusement park. After paying a 450 yen ticket, I headed downstairs for 3 ramens and to explore the late 1950s street scene that they have recreated.
However, don't miss the museum just behind the ticket office on the ground floor, which outlines the history of ramen and the many adaptations available across the country.
There is quite a lot of text on the displays giving detailed accounts at every turn. Ramen's origins were Chinese noodles. A recipe for keitaimen noodles from the 1480s is believed to be the first Chinese noodle recipe mentioned in Japan.
The first person to eat ramen in Japan came much later in 1697, although it was a Chinese noodle dish different from today's ramen. The noodles were made from lotus root starch, soup stock made from ham, and 5 condiments.
As Japan ended its isolation to the outside world in 1858 and the ban on eating meat was lifted, foreign cuisines, including Chinese noodles, began to gain popularity in Japan. It was initially too expensive for ordinary people. As China first opened to doing business with the West earlier, Westerners brought Chinese interpreters to Japan on their visits, and Chinese restaurants soon opened in the country.
Japan's first ramen shop is believed to be Rairaiken, which was established in 1910 in Asakusa with 13 Chinese cooks hired from Yokohama. Their broth was made from chicken and pork bones with a Japanese soy sauce base. The ramen was topped with roast pork, Chinese bamboo, and scallions.
Momofuku Ando, the founder of Nissin Foods, invented the world's first instant ramen in 1958, inspired by a long line of people waiting for ramen in the cold at a black market in Osaka. He wanted to make a more easily accessible ramen and learned from his wife's tempura cooking to deep fry noodles to remove moisture. It popularized ramen in households. He would later invent cup noodles in 1971.
Ramen comes in all sorts of forms and tastes across Japan, so I would definitely give it a try no matter which prefecture I visit.
You can buy a selection of it at their shop behind the exhibition area.
