From black market staple to billion-dollar global phenomenon — the humble instant noodle has a surprisingly rich history, and there’s a whole museum dedicated to it.
What Is the Cup Noodles Museum?
The Cup Noodles Museum is an interactive museum dedicated to instant noodles and their inventor, Momofuku Ando. It has two locations — one in Osaka and one in Yokohama — and both are far more hands-on than your average museum.
Visitors can decorate their own Cup Noodles cup and choose from a variety of soups and toppings to create a totally custom instant noodle. There’s also a noodle factory where you can make Ando’s original hand-made chicken ramen from scratch, kneading and seasoning the noodles yourself. The centerpiece exhibit, the Instant Noodles History Cube, is a towering display of thousands of instant noodle packages from around the world, tracing the history and evolution of the product since 1958.
Ramen’s Surprisingly Dark Origins
Ramen is believed to have been introduced to Japan by Chinese immigrants in the late 19th or early 20th century, evolving from Chinese wheat noodle dishes. For decades it was street food — something you bought from a stall, not something you made at home.
After Japan’s defeat in World War II, food shortages hit hard. Street food vendors were outlawed to conserve rations, a policy that had actually begun during the war itself. The only way to get ramen was the black market. Illegal food vendors had been a common presence throughout the war, but they became more vital than ever in the post-war period, when government rations were often weeks late. Flour was secretly diverted from commercial mills, and nearly 90 percent of black market stalls were under the control of gangsters from Japan’s organized crime syndicate, who extorted vendors for protection money.
The Man in the Shed
Ramen went mainstream in 1958, thanks to one extremely determined person. Momofuku Ando worked alone in a shed behind his home, sleeping only four hours a night and taking no days off for an entire year. After months of trial and error perfecting his flash-frying method, he released the first package of precooked instant noodles — Chikin Ramen.
It was initially considered a luxury item, priced around six times higher than traditional noodles. But the convenience factor won people over, and instant ramen became a hit. It was later voted the greatest Japanese invention of the 20th century in a national poll.
The Birth of the Cup
In 1966, Ando traveled to the United States to promote Chikin Ramen. He noticed Americans breaking up ramen blocks, dropping them into paper cups, and pouring boiling water over them. He saw the future immediately. It took two more years of development to perfect the self-contained cup format — including solving the specific engineering problem of suspending the noodles in the middle of the cup so they’d cook evenly when hot water was added.
Cup Noodles went on sale in 1971. As prices dropped, it became a booming global business. Worldwide sales reached 40 billion servings in 2016 alone. The original 1971 cup is preserved in both the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the Cup Noodles Museum in Yokohama.
A Food Product Unlike Any Other
The numbers around Cup Noodles are genuinely staggering. Over 100 billion cups have been sold since launch — enough to circle the Earth many times over. It’s sold in over 80 countries and ranks among the best-selling food products in human history. Americans alone consume over 5 billion servings of instant noodles annually, making the U.S. the highest-consuming country outside of Asia.
Cup Noodles even made it to space. When a Japanese astronaut became the first to eat it in orbit, a specially designed zero-gravity version was created for the occasion.
The Man Himself
Momofuku Ando lived to be 96 years old. He credited his longevity to two things: playing golf and eating chicken ramen almost every day. He was said to have eaten instant ramen until the very end.
Not a bad legacy for a man who spent a year alone in a shed.