Making Noodles and Being Noodles

Written by Bayus

On Monday, we went to the of Cup Noodles Museum, it was quite cool. We went there with my mom’s cousin, Chieko, and her family Takenori, Sola, and Watalu. There was a short movie. It was in Japanese but we got walkie talkie things that translated it for us, but it kept on breaking in and out ☹, but it was still cool. Their video was about how the Cup Noodles guy invented Cup Noodles. He tried making lots of different businesses but they all failed. He was almost broke. During World War 2 lots of people were hungry so he thought of the idea of making a ramen place. He wanted to make a ramen that all you needed to make it was hot water. It took him about a year to figure out how to make it but he finally figured it out with using a kind of oil technique for dehydrating, he was very successful. He wanted to expand his business, so he went to the U.S.A. but the Americans didn’t know how to use chop sticks. He asked some people for their advice, and they thought he should put it into a cup instead of a bowl, and Americans could eat it with forks. Next he wanted to make them in mass production, but that was a challenge to figure out because if you just dropped the noodles in the cup from the top they would fall in all wierd. So he thought and thought till he finally figured out that if he put the cup on the noodles from the top instead of the noodles in the cup from the top the cup would not fall on all weird.

At the museum there was also a moving shadow exhibit thing that was REALLY COOL, it was just one light moving forward but it made a big picture on the back wall, and it looked like a first person view of somebody moving in the forest. After that we made Cup Noodles. First we bought Cup Noodles cups from a vending machine, then we drew on them, then we said what we wanted in them like at Subway. We were topping ingredients inside.  I chose the classic chicken flavor and added in corn, cheese, garlic and something else I can’t remember. Next we got to see them seal them too. Then we went to get some lunch at a mall across the street. We wandered around a park but it was really hot outside so we went back the Cup Noodles place and Sola and I went to their park, which was a simulation of a cup noodles and how it was made. First we climbed a rope net, then went into a ball pit which I think was us “noodles” getting veggies and meat and stuff, then we slid down a slide in to “oil” which was represented by lights on the floor, it was cool. After that we “went in the cup” spinning thing, next there was a little digital game which we usually skipped, then we went down a roller slide “going in boxes to be shipped off” which was my favorite part, then we did it all again.

When we went home Dad and I went to the store and bought Aunt Tamiko and Uncle Yoshio flowers for Respect the Elders Day. They liked them very much and gave us chocolate which I liked very much.