Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum: a theme park you can eat

Most museums ask you not to touch the exhibits. This one hands you chopsticks.

The Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum opened in 1994, a short walk from Shin-Yokohama Station, and it is often described as the world's first food-themed amusement park. The main attraction isn't a display case. Instead, you walk down into a recreated old Tokyo street lined with real, working ramen shops, each serving its own style. It's part museum, part film set and part food hall, and I think it's one of the most enjoyable ways to understand just how varied ramen really is.

Down the stairs to 1958

The heart of the museum is underground. Head down from the entrance and you find yourself in a streetscape modelled on Tokyo in 1958: narrow lanes, old-fashioned shop fronts, vintage signs and posters, and lighting kept low and warm, like a permanent early evening.

The year is a deliberate choice. 1958 was when Momofuku Ando launched Chicken Ramen, the first instant ramen, and it sits in the middle of the post-war decades when ramen became an everyday food across Japan. It was also the year Tokyo Tower was completed. For many Japanese visitors, the late 1950s carry a strong nostalgia, part of a broader fondness for the Showa (昭和) era, the long imperial reign that spanned most of the twentieth century and the country's rapid post-war growth.

Even if you have no memories of the period, the effect is charming. You're not just eating ramen; you're eating it in the kind of street where many of these styles first found their audience.

A rotating line-up of shops

The shops are the real exhibits, and they change. The museum invites ramen shops from around Japan, and from overseas, to open branches inside, and the line-up rotates over time. On any visit you might find a rich pork-bone bowl from Kyushu near a clear, delicate broth from somewhere in the north, or a bowl from a shop abroad showing how ramen has travelled and changed outside Japan.

Because the line-up moves, I won't promise any particular shop; the museum's own site lists who is there now. What stays constant is the idea: a single place where you can compare regional styles side by side, which is exactly the comparison our regional ramen map tries to make on the page.

The museum is often credited with helping introduce regional ramen styles to a nationwide audience. For a shop from a small city, a stint here could mean being discovered by visitors from all over the country.

How to make the most of it

The best tool the museum offers is the mini bowl. Shops serve smaller "mini ramen" portions alongside the regular size, so visitors can try more than one style in a single visit. Use them.

A few tips for a good visit:

• Arrive hungry. Two or three mini bowls is a sensible goal for most people.
• Choose contrasts. Pair a rich, cloudy tonkotsu with a light shio or a clear shoyu, or a thick miso with something delicate. The differences are the point.
• Compare as you go. Between bowls, take a moment to notice what changed: the thickness of the noodles, the amount of fat, the saltiness, the aroma.
• Expect ticket machines and queues. Ordering is often done at a ticket machine, and popular shops can have a line at busy times.
• Check before you go. Admission, opening hours and the current shop line-up all change, so look at the museum's official information first.
• Leave time for the souvenir shop. It sells packaged ramen from around the country, a good way to carry the tasting home.

Yokohama itself is a great ramen city. It's the birthplace of iekei ramen, the rich pork-and-soy style served with thick noodles, and home to one of Japan's biggest Chinatowns, where the story of ramen in Japan partly begins. In another part of the city, the CupNoodles Museum Yokohama tells the instant ramen story. You could easily build a whole day around noodles.

What I love most about the place is its honesty. You can read about ramen forever, but the quickest way to understand it is to taste one style right after another and feel the differences for yourself. A museum whose exhibits keep changing suits a dish whose story is still being written.