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Shin-Yokohama
Ramen Museum Once you're past the entrance turnstiles, the first floor is devoted to numerous museum exhibits and a well-stocked souvenir shop. Clearly the museum's organizers racked their brains to come up with every imaginable ramen-related display they could think of, and the results are here to see -- ramen-making utensils, ramen bowls (over 300), ramen shop matchbooks, chopstick wrappers, curtains and aprons. The historical development of instant ramen is painstakingly chronicled, and the invention of cup ramen (the kind where you pour boiling water directly into a styrofoam cup) is celebrated as the dramatic technological achievement it most certainly was.
But the fun is only beginning, since the remainder of the museum (on two underground levels) is a miniature historical theme park. The date is 1958, and the place is shitamachi, a typically bustling working-class neighborhood crowded with tiny shops, houses and restaurants. The time is just 40 years ago, but it's definitely a different era, just before the rapid modernization that changed the face of Japanese cities. As a theme park, "Ramen Town" is not quite Disneyland, but it includes several nostalgic attractions -- vendors selling cotton candy and old-fashioned pastries, weathered storefronts and fifties-era billboards. Behind the storefronts are a time-capsule candy shop, two old-style bars dispensing regional brands of sake, and the main attraction -- eight ramen shops from around Japan, each serving its own distinctive variety of noodles.
After you've had your fill of ramen, sake, and numbingly sweet old-fashioned candies, you're ready for the souvenir shop back on the ground floor. Take-out packages of noodles from each of the shops are available, along with goods sporting the Ramen Museum's logo (a squiggly spiral line representing a slice of naruto fishcake). Logo merchandise includes plates, pencil holders, tote bags and much more; there are also postcards, cookbooks, and a full range of chopsticks for sale. Admission to the museum is Y300, or Y1,000 for a three-month pass, and ramen averages around Y900 per bowl. Sunday evenings seem to be the most crowded, with a 20-minute wait at the most popular noodle shops; other times of the week are far less congested. Parking is available, and it's only a 3-minute walk from the JR Shin-Yokohama bullet train station. Shin-Yokohama can be reached from central Tokyo in about 45 minutes, or a very comfortable 15 minutes if you splurge and take the bullet train for an extra Y800. Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum
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Instant
ramen packets from around the world adorn the walls, and overhead
TV monitors broadcast a continuous stream of ramen commercials from
the past 25 years. Ramen history buffs will be delighted (and the
rest of us merely mystified) by a replica of the first ramen dish
ever eaten by a 17th-century samurai named Mito Komon. Two life-size
dioramas show the operation of an instant ramen factory, and since
this is a modern museum (it opened in March 1994), there are also
banks of interactive video panels. Ramen-themed video games are
provided for younger visitors; the one I saw seemed to involve eating
as many noodles as quickly as possible (yet more proof of the bad
influence video games have on the young). 
This
is ramen for serious connoisseurs, with the eight shops chosen carefully
from among the tens of thousands of stores throughout the country.
The major ramen capitals -- Sapporo, Hakata, Kumamoto and Kitakata
-- are all represented, along with four legendary shops from the
Tokyo/Yokohama area. The two Kyushu shops (Hakata and Kumamoto)
serve their noodles in a salty whitish broth, made by slow-cooking
pork and chicken bones. The Sapporo shop serves its ramen in a miso-flavored
soup, a Hokkaido specialty, while the rest of the shops feature
soy sauce-based soups made with various combinations of pork and
chicken bones and seafood. Each shop has its own distinctive noodles
and its own selection of toppings, ranging from the standard chaa-shuu
(roast pork) and bean sprouts to kikurage ("wood ear") and
garlic chips.