Before I begun researching places to visit in Osaka, I had no idea who he was either. But in fact, everyone - from poor university students, to time-starved working professionals, to children, to men and women looking for a quick satisfying meal alone, to astronauts - should worship him as a hero!
Ando-san is the inventor of the ubiquitous instant noodles, cup noodle, and founder of the Nissin Food Products Company. Born to Taiwanese parents, he converted to Japanese citizenship after World War II. Obsessed with the problem of food shortages in Japan at that time, he spent one year experimenting with various techniques in a wooden shack behind his house to perfect a recipe of "ramen that can be quickly prepared and eaten at home with only hot water". Finally, in 1958, aged 48, he succeeded in using a flash-frying method to create the world's first precooked instant ramen. In the 1970s he introduced the polystyrene cup as a container to allow the noodles to stay hot longer, and for greater convenience. I have not done him justice by condensing his journey into just a few sentences, as he was a remarkable man who lived through multiple adversities, so do read up on his biography!
So what did we do that was related to Ando-san? For those who did not believe I could actually find an instant noodle museum, you may bow to me now.
The Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum is located in the city of Ikeda, 20 minutes north of Osaka city. For all the museum-haters out there, put aside your biases and visit this one, because you get to create your very own cup noodles for JPY300 each :) Admission to the museum is free.
A wall of instant noodles greets you the moment you step into the museum. It is a catalogue of every flavour of instant noodles ever produced by Nissin.
A reproduction of the wooden shack where Ando-san experimented on his recipes
The kitchen where he perfected the flash-frying method for noodles which would be cheap, tasty, non-perishable, safe, easy to prepare
The company also succeeded in creating instant noodles for the Japanese astronaut, Soichi Noguchi, to eat onboard the space shuttle
We arrived at the museum with less than 2 hours prior to closing time, and spent some time looking at the exhibits, which looked very interesting, but were all labelled in Japanese. I discovered too late that you can borrow an English audio guide at the reception for a deposit of JPY 2,000. So, please do that if you visit, and you can tell me what I've missed.
Finally, with an hour left, we entered the My CupNoodles Factory area, where we were ushered by the smiling attendants - almost factory production line style - to pay, then to sanitize our hands, then given an empty polystyrene cup, then led to an empty table to start decorating our cups.
The fun part!
Et voila! The end products!
Next step is to select the soup stock and 4 ingredients to be added to the noodles.
Guess which one was YL's?
Finally, the packaging was shrink-wrapped and rolled off into the customer's gleeful waiting hands
The last step is to pack the cup noodle into its own air-filled container so that it can be transported safely, even in an international flight
The noodles last 1 month. Can't wait to taste ours!
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