Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum

Patrick Food, Travel

Another great place we visited was The Instant Ramen Museum, located in Ikeda, a short train trip from Osaka. It’s pretty easy to get to with just a short walk from the train station and a couple of signs along the way. Once found, it’s unmistakable with a picture of the founder, Momofuku Ando standing atop a giant instant ramen noodle cup.

museum

Entrance to the museum is free although a number of the specific activities do cost you some. They run a noodle making workshop upstairs, although you need to book in advance. Since we didn’t really have a chance to call up and book, all we got to see were all the people making them from the outside. I’m sure it’d be made even more interesting trying to understand some of the instructions in Japanese as well.

makeyourown

The rest of the museum is dedicated to the history and the current activities of how instant ramen are made, and what lead to its inventor overcoming some of the problems like how to preserve the noodles, how to get the noodles into the cup, and the wide variety of flavours and recipes people demand. In fact, they have a history of instant ramen tunnel with all the different sorts of instant ramen created for the different markets around the world.

noodletunnel

For another ¥300 you can also construct your own Instant Ramen noodles to take home, this time much closer to the ones you buy in store. The instructions are made clear by the following poster:

  • Everyone gets some ramen noodles
  • Pick one of four different flavours for the soup
  • Pick four toppings from a selection of eleven different ones
toppings

With the number of soup flavours and different combinations of toppings, you end up with a total of 5460 different possible combinations. They also heat seal the cup so that it lasts for up to a month, although mine didn’t last for the trip, having it for one of our meals. You also get to spend some time designing your own cup, using plenty of different marker pens. Of course, I’m sure you can tell which one was mine, and which was the example they had from the picture below:

customramennoodles

I’ll be the first to admit that this museum is a little bit cheesy, and slightly over the top in some of the interactive models yet it’s great fun and different in the things that you would normally consider for a standard museum.

Suntory Yamazaki Distillery

Patrick Travel

Though we were based in Osaka for the first part of our trip, before the rest of the family arrived, I managed to make it out to the Suntory’s Whisky Distillery located in Yamazaki. It’s an easy JR train ride out from either Osaka or Kyoto (it’s on the JR Kyoto line). I can’t remember the fare but I think it was ¥450. Here’s the station you’d get out of.

yamazaki

The distillery is about a ten minute walk, though you pass it if you’re travelling in from Osaka. Look for the big pot still, outside (like below).

railway

Alternately just starting walking towards it and follow the sign posts with the arrows. It’s pretty well marked as it’s one of the major attractions in this small town. Like most places in Japan, this place was immaculately kept. Beautiful lush green gardens, clean pavements and roads lead you to the front desk where you state that you’d like to participate in the free tour. You can read plenty about the history of the place on the Suntory website, but you could tell the air was really fresh, and the site had been picked because of the clean tasting waters, and the ideal climate to replicate classic Scotch recipes.

signs

The tours run hourly and we arrived with about half an hour before the noon tour started off. We signed in, filled in some paper work (like which country we were visiting from), and were then handed a portable audio guide spoken in English. Like most audio tours you have in Europe, you get a funky little device you plug numbers in before you heard someone replaying a scene, or describing different situations. However, unlike many of the ones that came with uncomfortable little earbuds, Suntory provided a comfy “behind the ear” clip earphone. The whole tour is free as well, so you didn’t even need to put a deposit down.

tour

In our time to kill, we walked through the “library”, a small building containing their tasting shop, a whole lot of whiskies on display and lots of interesting bottles and set ups. They also have a store upstairs, conveniently just around the corner from where the tour starts (and ends) that sells lots of different merchandise and, of course, lots of single malt whisky.

library

I’m going to skip describing the details of the tour, since I learned a whole lot about the whisky doing a trip up to Speyside a couple of years back. What I did learn though was that they used a lot more of Japanese white oak trees in their production yet still imported a lot of their barrels. If not for the Japanese oak barrels, the whole process was otherwise remarkably close to the ones that I remember back in Scotland.

distillery

Of course, the great thing about the visit to the distillery is the free sampling at the end of it. Amongst the group of us (pretty much the other eight people being Japanese), we sat inside their decadently outfitted sampling room with a number of drams given to us to try, even complete with a tiny basket of small goodies (rice crackers, chocolates and biscuits) to accompany each dram. Strangely I found that they assumed that everyone wanted some sort of mixer with their whisky but I (at least tried to) say I wanted to appreciate the flavours on their own and just had the dram “straight”.

sampling

We were first presented with a Yamazaki 10 year single malt, followed by a 12 year from their other distillery in Hakushu. Unfortunately I didn’t take down what year each of these came. The Yamazaki 15 year definitely had a much lighter roundness to it, full of fruit and sublime tones. A drop of water rounded it out without taking away its sweetness. The Hakushu had richer caramel tones, and a slightly smokier after taste that I preferred much more.

I’d highly recommend people come to Yamazaki for the tour. It’s nice to get out of a major city and see the small suburbs, and the tour is still pretty reasonable even if you don’t understand Japanese. It’s free and best of all, you get access to some great quality whisky.

Visit their website here

Returning from Japan

Patrick UK Life

I’ve not had a chance to update this site for a couple of weeks since I spent the last two weeks in Osaka and Kyoto. I’m almost through the plethora of email that stacks up in two weeks and will post something a bit more interesting.

Secret Cinema meets Metal on Metal

Patrick Entertainment, Movies, UK Life

Metal on MetalOn Sunday I ended up at Shepherd’s Bush Empire to participate in one of the Secret Cinema events, a themed evening out where the movie is secret right to the very end and the location disclosed just a few days earlier. When I signed up for the ticket, all I knew was that there were going to be “Rock Gods” and “Shady Promoters”. Later I find out the theme of the evening is 80s rock, so I end up buying a vintage leather jacket on the weekend to accommodate. I found a decent bargain at Rokit in Covent Garden too, so pretty stoked about that.

To be honest, I don’t remember that much about the 80s other than lots of curly hair and bright coloured slacks. After all, I hadn’t even hit my teens at the end of it. I had a much better understanding of 80s rock when I saw everyone else. Ripped shirts, brightly coloured, tight fitting trousers and tights, and lots and lots of messy hair apparently was the idea. The extras hired by (or from) Secret Cinema also came in complete theme and entertained us as we lined up in all of our different lines. We had bikes come through, rock papparazi, a skirmish between two rocked out blokes that made the line up in Fabric on a Friday night look super tame.

When we entered the empire we took to our second floor seats, complete with a bottle of Vitamin Water and a packet of crisps. Other attendents stood around in the aisles, handing out small buckets of popcorn as everyone else eventually made it to their seats. Complete with band kit, it wasn’t long before we witnessed a rock weding, watched a small film about a Heavy Metal Drummer in the middle east and began the session with Toronto based band, Cauldron.

It wasn’t long before the real movie was announced, apparently the premiere of Anvil! The Story of Anvil, though my sister had recently been to yet another “premiere” of it earlier in the week. It’s a great movie though be warned it’s a documentary and probably not for everyone. I’d seen it advertised and I can’t say it was one that I’d go to the cinemas for. It follows the tragic tale of a Canadian band who had a profound influence on the heavy metal music scene, yet never found the fame that they deserved. Throughtout it, we see them and their, almost, unwavering belief and passion for their music. What was surprising at the end of the movie was that Anvil the movie was suddently displaced by Anvil the band in real life. They played three songs before calling it a night, and what a night it was!

Traces

Patrick Entertainment, Theatre, UK Life

Last weekend, my sister asked me along to see a new circus/art stage show at the Peacock Theatre called Traces presented by a French-Canadian based troupe of four guys and a girl. The performance is best described as a fusion of different performance styles encompassing everything from dance, various circus skills, some acting and comedic styles. Everything had clever touches including the welcome note at the start and the intermission joking about the things that you could do that most other theatres would prohibit.

I was particularly impressed by their use of less conventional circus objects including basketballs and skateboards to create some visually stunning tricks. Considering that the stage wasn’t that big, and there were five constantly moving bodies, it’s obvious they’d rehearsed a great deal to put on a show that truly impressed. Not everything worked out well including their mock simulation of a “big brother”-like vote off, but for a couple of hours it was still worth the money we paid for it.

Snow Pics

Patrick UK Life

Okay, so I’m a little late with the photos from the snow from last Monday, however I thought I’d still post some for you guys to see. Miraculously, even though most of London shut down, I still managed to do my normal long commute including the tube, train and a taxi to get to Marlow.

snow

So I didn’t get to spend the day building a snowman, or sledging but how weird it was to see the likes of my tube station covered in snow, and still managing to operate (even being above ground). The photo above is the snow falling on the benches. Below is a street I stopped in on the way to work, just to demonstrate how thick it had been falling. It’s one of the ones between Baker Street and Marylebone station.

carssnow

Finally we have Marylebone Station covered in snow. Already one of the better stations both in terms of commuter-friendliness minus the crazy antics of Waterloo, Victoria or Paddington in the morning, it looked even more spectacular covered in snow.

marylebonesnow

Somehow Chiltern Rail still managed to provide a full service although some of the trains were about half an hour behind schedule. Still a cool day overall. It’s just a shame I couldn’t hang out with everyone else who got to play in the snow.