Here's the entrance to the museum. Notice how they spelled "ramen" with a "u," making it "raumen." What the heck is up with that?

Here's the entrance to the Ramen Museum. You can experience authentic ramen, as well as types of ramen from around the world. Good thing there's no ramen from Phoenix, Arizona. There was once a place there called Cafe Kobe that had terrible ramen. It had stuff like zucchini and cauliflower in the ramen. The owner was a guy from Okaya even, but he was convinced that genuine ramen would not sell well at his restaurant. Unfortunately, not even Americans would eat that stuff. The place eventually failed and was bought out and made into a trendy sushi joint.

No idea what the hell is up with that picture of two guys kissing. Pretty grodie to the max, for sure.

You can buy kitchen stuff to make ramen on your own here.

Hey vegetarians, just get lost. Well, I guess vegetarians are sort of okay (if done right), but Vegans are the worst. When one's eating habits become a religion in itself, it gets pretty annoying. Stop forcing everyone to accomodate for your eating disorder.

Here we are looking down into the main part of the museum. This museum is actually built down into the ground. Above the first floor is where the parking garage is. The actual museum part is like stepping back into the Showa Period, specifically the 1950s back streets of Tokyo, complete with a simulated sky at perpetual dusk.

To the left you will see an old-fashioned tabacco kiosk. I sometimes still come across these, but they are typically abandoned.

To the left you can see the alleyway that stretches around the perimiter of the large open area in the middle. More ramen restaurants can be found here.

Part of the museum is made to look like the exterior of a pachinko parlor.

At each of these restaurants, you can order half-sized bowls of ramen in order to sample as many different kinds of ramen as possible. Each ramen restaurant has its own theme and style of ramen.

Another part of the museum is made to look like the exterior of a movie theater. Right: An old-fashioned tube TV was showing footage of vintage boxing bouts.

The exteriors of drugstores and barber shops are also simulated. Check out the laundry hanging in the window!

Right: Toride was the first restaurant we ate at. They specialize in tonkotsu (pork bone) ramen.

This old-fashioned vending machine dispenses glass bottles. Nice weathering!

Left: This is just the corridor towards the restrooms. It is nicely weathered and gives a nice old, dingy atmosphere. The actual restroom itself was clean and modern, though.

Here's Ulan-chan peeking her head into the fake box office for the "movie theater" while we're waiting in line for our second ramen restaurant.

Left: Kamome was our second restaurant we ate at. They specialize in shio (salt flavor) soup.

Right: Before entering the restaurant, you select your order from the ticket vending machine out front. You hand your tickets to the server and they bring your order to your table. So, nobody actually handles your money; only the vending machine. This is pretty common in Japan.

Fantastic weathering on that sign! The problem with such nostalgia is that people tend to believe that everything looked run-down back in the old days and nothing was new. People tend to do this with scale models, too. Instead of building a model of a WWII era Mustang, people build it to look like it's been sitting in a junkyard for 50 years and think that this is how they looked when they were in the sky.

Here's the shio ramen we ate.

This part is in the simulated back alley.

Here is what is called a dagashiya, which is an old-fashioned Japanese-style sweets and snacks shop. These can still be found all over Japan.

Left: Look, it's a kitty! Right: old-fashioned celebrity post cards are on sale at the dagashiya.

Little foam airplanes! You can toss these and the propellers spin. I bought a P-40 Warhawk and a P-51 Mustang. Kickass!

Left: candy cigarettes: chocolate and orange flavors. Right: there are modern candies there, too.

Right: an old-fashioned telephone booth.

Left: There's a bar there, too.

Left: the clerk at the dagashiya was dressed in a real Showa-style uniform. Right: A portion of the upper floor of the Ramen Museum is dedicated to slot car racing.

It's also dedicated to plastic models. Hey, no complaint here! Most of these are just for display purposes and you can neither touch them nor even get near them because they're blocked off. They could be empty boxes for all I know.

Ulan-chan wanted to race the cars.

Look! They had a Knight Rider slot car!