Osaka: Instant Ramen Museum Day
Mäneka:
We headed out to the Ikeda neighborhood of Osaka to visit the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum where you can take part in a “hands-on” (in reality very hands-off) workshop to make your own Cup Noodles. First you buy a cup for 300 yen. Then you wash your hands, and are provided a plastic lid that is not be removed. Then you are seated in a orderly fashion at tables with markers for you to mark the cup with today’s date and to customize your cup with drawings. I went with a Halloween motif, Kamala did a noodle slurping self-portrait, Lori did an Osaka theme, and Linda went abstract. Our drawing was fairly poor compared to everyone else, including some primary school-aged children.
Once you are done drawing, you hand your cup to the ladies behind plexiglass and the cup is placed over the noodles, and you turn crank to insert them—an act of “thinking upside down.” The placement of the cups over the noodles rather than noodles into cup was one of the great achievements of Mr. Ando.
The most fun part is the selection of broth powder flavor and toppings for your ramen. Soup choices are chicken, seafood, curry, and tomato chili. One may select four toppings out of shrimp, peas, egg, cheese, potato, surimi, kimchi, fish sausage with cartoon chicks printed on it, garlic, green onion, pork, and corn. So many choices! For interested parties, I selected curry broth with kimchi, garlic, shrimp, and corn.
Your soup is then sealed with a paper lid and shrink wrapped. Once it is dispensed below, you are given an inflatable bag with a string on it to carry, protect, and stylishly model your noodles. Soup must be eaten within one month. The museum also included a recreation of Mr. Ando’s home where he invented instant noodles, as well as a tunnel of ramen, showcasing the evolution of instant ramen through the ages. The exhibits were all in Japanese, though, so the rest were mostly lost on us.
Our dinner experience tonight was Beef and Love at Gyu Ta in Namba City. All you can eat yakiniku with pricing based on gender and age. I think we got our money’s worth of beef, but I probably could have packed in a few more plates. It probably wasn’t the very best beef you can get in these parts, but was enjoyable nonetheless.
After dinner, Kamala and I wandered Namba Parks and ogled the covetable, but pricey threads while Lori and Linda fetched Balaram from Osaka airport. Our party is now complete!
Balaram:
The day began nicely enough at 7 AM with a shower and last minute emptying of the dishwasher, which should have been run the night before, and getting the house ready to be locked up for a couple of weeks. Uber came within 7 minutes. Roxanne was nice, a recent Midwestern transplant from St. Louis, who lives on the peninsula and had not yet been to the East Bay and was impressed with the “character” of our neighborhood.
Though the drive to SFO, bag drop off, and TSA pre-check through security went easily, the flight showed its nature right away: it was a United operated flight, not ANA, and a medical emergency delayed the flight by 45 minutes. I wasn’t clear what the emergency was, though an announcement was made that any doctors on board should identify themselves and a few did. Eventually an EMT group came aboard and we were able to take off.
I had a window seat in Row 34 of the 747. My plan was to get up every 2 hours or so throughout the 10.5 hour flight. Walk around, brush my teeth, maybe sleep a bit, read, listen to podcasts….First, there were no individual TV screens, just the aisle ones from the ’70s. No control over what to see or when. The most interesting programming was a National Geographic show on wolves, bears and bison Yellowstone, where sound was not necessary. After the lunch service (pasta or chicken) the guy in the middle seat zonked out for most of the flight. So much for my plan to get up regularly!
The cramped seating was made significantly worse by a total lack of interest on the part of the flight attendants to the well-being of their passengers. No one came by offering water or any other beverages from the conclusion of the lunch service until 1.5 hours before landing at Narita. Almost 8 hours! After a horrible breakfast of eggs/potatoes we soon landed and the middle seat guy finally woke up! Customs was pretty uneventful and then I waited for 2+ hours for my Peach Air flight to Osaka. First thing I did was drink lots of water!
Peach is a low cost airline where everything costs something. There was no real counter at Narita, but helpful staff. No one bought anything from the flight attendants so that was one of the fastest trips down the aisle! After a quick flight we landed on a remote part of the airport from which we were bused in to the terminal. Linda and Lori were there to meet me and, after getting more water, we got on the subway to Osaka Namba, an exciting bustling area. Nice hotel near the train station too! I ate a bit of leftovers and slept soundly until morning. Then the Japan trip really started!