Ochen Priyatna

Day 2 began with a venture into the fast food culture of Japan. Knowing how fast-paced Japan's lifestyle is, the term fast-food seemed to have transcended and assimilate into the daily doings of Japanese. Here in Japan, you find fast-food chains that served food that would otherwise be classified as slow (?) food elsewhere.

So what defines fast-food? A quick google search brings up the ideas of easily prepared processed foods served in snack bars/restaurants as a quick meal/taken away. Now the interesting aspect of Japanese fast food is that it solely serves the 2nd purpose of a quick meal. Meal is prepared with fresh food that could be easily prepared nonetheless.

Interior of Matsuya includes bar-seating and communal seats. In our visit there, we saw salarymen taking their 15-min fuss-free breakfast.

We decided on Matsuya for breakfast seeing that it was located relatively near Shibuya station and a short 10 min walk from our place. We arrived at 10am to only 2-3 customers. A vending machine greeted us and we happily selected our options. I got a regular beef set with an onsen egg added on.

Vending machines to place order. 90% of the menu is in Japanese, but the graphics helps a lot in understanding and navigating the menu.

Sauces and condiments were available on each table, together with a jug of water.

For the outlet we visited, it was only helmed by one dude but he was extremely efficient in his service, be it serving the water or the bowls. We idled around for about 5 minutes fiddling with the water and condiments and our beef bowls were served.

What a fulfilling breakfast!

At this point of time, I'm thinking, I can totally see myself eating this cheap yet filling breakfast everyday! The whole meal, including the add-on onsen egg, cost ~400Yen or about SG$5. Options start as low as 200Yen for a mini beef bowl. This regular beef bowl had so much beef - I think twice as much as a regular Yoshinoya set in Singapore - and the amazing Japanese Pearl rice meant I had to finish the whole bowl. Pity that I only discovered towards the end of the meal, that the wooden apparatus beside the bowl was chilli powder, else, my beef bowl would have been even more amazing.

Matsuya

Address: 2-1 Sakuragaokacho, Shibuya, Tokyo 150-0031, Japan

Opening hours: 24 hours

Nearest mrt: Shibuya, but there are lots of outlets!

After a fulfilling breakfast, we crossed the famous Shibuya crossing and took a train down to Yokohama. The itinerary of the day was to visit the cup noodles museum but coincidentally, the Pokemon centre was located in the mall beside it. 

Walked pass Pompodour on the way to the Pokemon centre, grabbed some donuts and pastries

Deep fried donut with an ONSEN EGG INSIDE wow

Sub-standard donuts with chocolate that I would not recommend haha

Pompodour

Address: Japan, 〒220-0005 Kanagawa Prefecture, Yokohama, Nishi Ward, Minamisaiwai, 1−4 相鉄ジョイナス

Opening hours: 10PM - 9PM

Nearest station: Yokohama

Pokemon centre that is just a store in a mall....probably cuz we went there on a Sunday, the place was PACKED with Japanese kids oh ma goodness

Not too huge of Pokemon, especially the newer series, so I just loitered around, while JJ took this amazing shot of sleeping elves (Y)

Walking across the bridge, we were greeted by a bunch of buildings and amongst them, the cup noodle museum, which had 3 weird exclamation marks before them. Before you discount the Japanese for having bad grammar - those 3 !!! actually come from the design (grooves) at the upper rim of all Nissan cup noodles. Wowzers.

Admission was about 300Yen per pax. The cup noodle making session has to be reserved separately (timings are restricted) and there is also a cup-noodle experience for kids below 12 where you get to experience being a Nissan cup noodle! (going through the cupping stations, packaging stations etc.) Pretty cool, but you gotta drag a kid along with you to get admitted haha

The tour starts off with a huge collection of every Nissan cup noodles. The columns are the timelines whereas the rows are the different collection e.g. there is a row just for UFO noodles. I think this panel of noodles actually come at the end of the tour? The tour starts with a video about the origin of Nissin - pretty inspiring and tells the intention of this museum. The video ends with a note calling out to all Japanese to innovate and to welcome failures for without failure, there won't be success.

Here lies a pot of (fake) oil as well as the container which the founder of Nissin, Momofuku Ando, first invented to hold the noodles while frying. He discovered that by frying the noodles, he was able to lengthen the shelf life of noodles and the texture of noodles returned upon hydration.

Momofuku's inspiration and drive arose from the desire to feed Japanese a good meal of noodles post-WWII

Spot any familiar flavours? As Nissin expanded, local flavours were introduced to appeal to the local markets.

The cup noodles experience is located at the top level of the museum, but since I'm neither 12 yr old nor do I have a 12 year old with me, I exited the building to the balcony to enjoy the amazing view of Yokohama bay instead. Couldn't resist taking a touristy shot with this amazing view

One for the record

Another attraction on the same level was the international noodles food court-ish place where noodles from all over the world were sold. Some noodles offered includes Kazakh lagman, Thai tomyum noodles, Indonesia mee goreng, Korean naengmyeon and the original Nissin chicken flavoured cup noodles. Between the two of us, we ordered a naengmyeon, Lagman, original Nissan noodles and tomyum to share. Pretty decent portion and it cost <SG$12 in total!

Happy me with the spiciest offering in the food place - Tom Yum noodles

Then comes the most exciting part of the cup noodles museum - making your own cup noodles! Elsewhere in the world, this activity would have been overpriced but it was pretty affordably priced at 300Yen per cup. We took a time chit that indicated our slot at 3pm (we arrived at ~1pm) and we were greeted with this crowd of fellow cup noodle creators. Forever crowded - but an interesting experience nonetheless!

The journey begin with a vending machine where you are dispensed a plain cup noodle cup. For hygiene purposes, there is a station where staff would place a clear cover over the top to prevent marker ink from getting into the interior. Next step is where the Van Goghs and Picassos flourished.

My artwork

Thereafter, you'd be directed into a queue and you get to 1. choose your toppings, 2. experiencing cupping over the noodles 3. witness the plastic melting over your cup. The above cup already had a plastic layer over it like any other conventional cup noodles. All 3 steps are carried out in a clean room, handled by staff in clean room outfits, but you get to witness the whole process via a glass panel.

Fun (but pretty genius) fact: Nissin covers it's noodles with cups vs dropping the noodles into the cups to prevent the situation of noodles not fitting in the cups - a higher probability of wastage than cupping cups over noodles.

Our toppings. The chick fishcakes were the cutest!!!

Subsequently, there is a station to pack your precious cup noodle into a self-inflated airbag where you can take home. Another ingenious packaging I would say. 

Convenient packaging

A museum with a simple message to convey, yet we spent a good 4-5 hours in it. (Including the souvenir shop of course). Thereafter, we were starving from our small servings of noodles during lunch so we headed over to an izakaya near Shibuya for our dinner.

After realising that google only does so much to recommend the Izakayas that we may visit, we just gave up and visited any one that looks decent. Note: it is extremely common for people to smoke in Izakayas so if you detest the smell of cigarettes (like myself), it is highly recommended to avoid izakayas then.

Anyhow, this izakaya had air-con so we decided to give it a try. Pretty localised cuz the menu didn't had a word of English at all. We relied on the posters on the wall showing the top 10 items and pretty much ordered them all hahaha

Our spread - only the first round though...

Definitely the sashimi weren't as fresh as the sushi place we went on the first day, but, the fried goods and beansprouts were pretty decently good. Plus, beer and food were quite affordably priced as well. Can't remember exactly but we spent ~SG$20 and we ordered almost 9/10 of the top 10 items plus a beer, a makgeolli, and 2 high balls.

So what is a highball? Some Japanese concoction whereby Japanese whisky/Shochu (Suntory usually) is added to flavoured soda. Interesting drink but gets you drunk quite quickly considering Shochu has an alcoholic content of 13-20%! No record of the name of this izakaya but it is a hole-in-the-wall establishment near Shibuya 109.

Thereafter, we called it a day as we had plans to visit Meiji shrine the day after and I was still suffering from exhaustion from the red-eye flight. More to come!