Cup noodles & cool animals

It is now almost week 10 in Japan, with less than 3 weeks left (18 days to be exact). We (possibly just me) will be back in Washington sooner than we know! In this past week, Noah and I have been good as usual. Noah has been working extra hard on the weekends and will probably be doing so until we leave. This week I have found myself busy working on job applications and my thesis. FINALLY. One of my professors has finally returned the first draft of my thesis a couple days ago, and I have been trying to polish it up so that I can submit a second draft, and well, hopefully be done so that I can finally feel like I graduated! :) Other than those updates, there isn't too much going on. I am looking forward to a possible hiking trip with Kyli if the weather is nice this week. And I am also looking forward to my mom visiting! She will be here on Friday, and that is when my two week adventure will begin. Unfortunately, I won't be able to take Noah with me :( but hopefully he will be able to join us for a small trip on one of the weekends.

Anyway, I forgot to post pictures about Noah's and my trip to Yokohama last weekend. We had a wonderful day exploring many of the major sites in Yokohama. We started our day out at the Cup Noodle Ramen Museum, which pleasantly surprised me! It was much more entertaining that I expected it to be, and I am so glad that we decided to put it on our list of "things we must see". There were 5 floors to the museum, with each floor serving a different purpose. Of course, the main floor is where the tickets were purchased.

On the first floor is where we found this giant cup noodle and cute little chicken, which is their mascot. 

On the second floor were the main exhibits, including a room filled with a timeline of ramen upon ramen upon ramen. The room included the very first ramen that were made, as well as all the ramen varieties around the world. The second floor also had information and pictures on the history of how instant ramen was invented (by Momofuku Ando) and how it became a world sensation. What makes the noodles so special is the technique used to make them. A special technique is used to fry and dry to noodles in such a way that when rehydrated and heated, the noodles will take up water, expand, and become soft. The dried noodles are suspended in the cup with air both at the bottom of the cup and at the top of the cup to allow water to soften the noodles evenly from both sides. In addition, the noodles are actually densely packed on the top and loose at the bottom, also so that the noodles will soften evenly.

 The first instant ramen products EVER! 

Stacks of ramen.

Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant cup noodles.

An sculpture of instant cup ramen. Who knew that ramen could be so creative and artistic?

The third floor was divided into two sections, with one section dedicated to people who wanted to customize their own instant cup ramen and the other section dedicated to people who wanted to learn how to make ramen from scratch. I believe you have to reserve a spot to learn how to make ramen noodles, so Noah and I just customized our own instant ramen! The steps we took to make our own ramen are below.

Step 1: Put 300 yen in the vending machine and retrieve your styrofoam cup.

Step 2: Date and decorate your styrofoam! We had a lot of fun decorating our cups, and we probably spent too much time doing so. 

In progress

Front

Back

 Step 3: Operate the crank to place the dried noodles into the styrofoam cup.

Step 4: Choose the soup base and 4 ingredients to put in your cup ramen.

Shelley's ramen (left): Regular soup base with green onions, brown onions, egg, and fish cake. 

Noah's ramen (right): Regular soup base with green onions, brown onions, cheese, and shrimp (?).

Step 5: Seal the cup ramen with a lid.

Step 6: Place a plastic seal around the whole cup.

 Step 7: Place the cup a dryer so that the plastic wrap forms to the cup.

All done!

 Step 8: Pick up a bag and a string. Tie the string onto the plastic bags, place the noodles between the two bags, and blow air into it!

The finished product! Whoops, it's a little crooked. 

 The fourth floor had a restaurant and a little playground with kids. The fifth floor was restricted, so thus our picture tour of the Cup Ramen Noodle Museum will end here.

Next on our list of things to do was go to Cosmo World to go to the arcade (again) and go on the large ferris wheel. We really don't need any more, but we won some more little stuffed animals to add to our collection. The ferris wheel was awesome! It was huge, there was a lot of space in the little cabins, the view was wonderful (although rainy), and we got to spend a lot of time up in the air. 

Here is Noah in the cabin.

And here I am in a panoramic view.

From Cosmo World, we made our way back to the train station and over to Orbi, which is an exhibit that uses technology from SEGA to make BBC Earth's nature videos come to life in an  interactive experience with animals and natural wonders all over the world. Needless to say, it was AWESOME! It is just the kind of thing that Noah and I like to enjoy, and we also got some cool pictures out of it too.

That is all the pictures from Cosmo World!! Aside from going to Yokohama, we just relaxed and also experimented with my new camera lens. We are definitely no expert at portrait photography, but here are some cool photos that Noah and I took.

That's all for now! I will post again when my mom and I come back from our weeklong trip to Hiroshima, Fukuoka to visit family I've never met, Nara, and Kyoto!