asia - day 8 - instant noodle revolution
there was a time when i was actually healthy. i exercised every day without fail. i ate small portions of healthy food. no chips. no snacking after dinner. no instant noodles. japan changed all this. i started eating instant noodles again... with a vengeance. there was so much variety. it was inexpensive and quick and easy. i was hooked.
on this day in osaka, we went to the mothership of instant noodles. but first, a mosiac of the pillars outside our hotel - all four of them.
we walked through a portion of osaka to catch the train to ikeda station. i love japanese signs... too bad i can't read them. i hope this one isn't advertising porn.
then we got to ride this super cute retro train! i loved this train the most out of all the trains we took.
soon enough (ok after getting majorly lost), we got to our destination: the momofuku ando instant ramen museum!
i had high hopes for this place but there wasn't much to see. at least it was free. there was a corridor of instant noodles taped to the wall.
the museum mainly catered to children. i love this photo of the boy looking at the interactive displays alongside three little girls. that's right hubby, crank that wheel - show 'em how it's done!
we got to decorate our own cup noodles so that kept us occupied for quite a while. we chose our soup base and 4 toppings. then our cup noodles were sealed and shrink wrapped.
here are some photos of momofuku - he looks a little like karl lagerfeld in that centre photo! WHAT!
we were famished after all that drawing and colouring so we went to a little cafeteria area where we purchased instant noodles from vending machines for lunch. what else! i was so hungry that i bought the biggest one available and convinced the boy to do the same. afterwards, i wanted another one but the boy didn't seem overly eager to eat more so we headed out.
on our way back to the station, we bought some DELICIOUS chewy candies for our train ride back to the city. we were addicted to chewy candies.
when we got back to osaka, we got so lost that we realized after 20 minutes of walking that we had made a big circle. it was so crowded and i was so tired. we finally made our way back to the right street and headed back to the hotel. on our way, we popped into shops and saw massive parking lots of just bikes.
after we got back to the hotel, rested, ate more instant noodles, and washed down our meal with our last bottle of champagne, we headed out to peruse electronics stores - the boy's favourite pasttime and the bane of my existence. the 7d had just been released and we played with it for a while in the store. this particular location had two of them so i put my memory card into one and snapped some pix of the boy playing with the other one. i also took a video of him saying, "i like this camera" but you can barely hear him (i'm actually not even sure that's what he said) so i won't post it.
