Let’s go to the museum of Cup-noodle

You know cup-noodle, don’t you? Or do you now chikinramen?

Cup-noodle and chikinramen were born in Japan, a passionate Japanese entrepreneur created them. The museum of cup-noodle is in Ikeda city in the northern area of Osaka prefecture. Many foreigners, kids, young children, teenagers and adults go there. It is a joyful museum and a beneficial place for an ambitious entrepreneur.


Let’s go to The Museum Of Cup-noodle

Nearly twenty kindergarten kids who formed two lines wearing red caps and white T-shirts led by their teachers walked slowly to The Museum Of Cup-noodle. They looked like ducks…no!.. pretty chicks. The Museum Of Cup-noodle welcomed a lot of people of all ages at my visiting. All bright rooms colored in white fitted all people with white, black and yellow skin. They enjoyed to see the exhibitions of the instant ramen, and to make their own cup-noodle in their own original styles.


The creator of cup-noodle and chikinramen.

Chikinramen was born in 1958. And cup-noodle was incubated in 1971. The man who created the two instant ramen, of course instant ramen itself, for the first time in the world was Momofuku Ando. He was born in Taiwan in 1910 and he spent his young life in Osaka during World War 2. He failed in his all businesses and he had been broke in the 1950’s. At the same time he assured that eating is a more important component of basic life than wearing and inhabiting through the experience of his deep poverty after the war.


(The statue is of Momofuku Ando with a chikinramen in his right hand)

The short trip of the development of chikinramen and cup-noodle

I will explain about the development of instant ramen according to the guidance of the Museum. (The guidance is noted in the Japanese language, then I will translate it into English.)

1) Departure

When he saw the malnourished people who formed a long line in order to eat a bowl of ramen in a town which was devastated by the war, he assured; “First of all, eat and satisfy the appetite. After that we can fill our heart with affluence”. Eventually he was struck with an idea that instant easy making ramen could be sold explosively, and started the development of instant ramen in a small cabin.

The development took approximately a year. He wasn’t an entrepreneur who had imagined the goal from the beginning but an entrepreneur who had gone the distance step by step by finding the next challenging work after failing.


2) The success of chikinramen

When he saw his wife’s deep-frying tempura one day, an idea hit him. He changed the noodle-making method from boiling noodles to frying noodles. After much trial and error he made the final chikinramen, and started to sell it. It was at his age of 48. Chikinramen sold like flying birds and he had expanded his business of instant ramen by his manufacturing company.

He said after the success of chikinramen ; “ a good merchandise with deep impacts can be sold necessarily”. Furthermore he said; “ to externalize the work of home-cooking is the reason for success. We have substituted the role of home-keeping, moreover chikinramen is cheap and nourishing”. I think of him as a man who seized the essential core of materials and phenomena, along with as a good marketer.

3) The challenge to the world stage

He had a new idea that he wanted the people who had no custom of using chop-sticks and bowls for dining to eat instant ramen. At last he started to develop a new instant ramen which people could eat whenever and wherever.

He instructed his significant thoughts to his subordinates. “There is no boundary in the sense of taste. However if we can’t recognize the difference of natural features and cultures, we will never be able to get over the boundary. We have to sweat much to assimilate the taste of our instant ramen into the traditional taste of foreign countries“. He always payed big attention to how to think fundamentally; not to how to think methodically.

The taste of cup-noodle is specific and completely different from real ramen. Many other functions of cup-noodle are really original as specific as the taste. The form of cup-noodle, the raw material of the container, the lid of aluminum foil, the inhomogeneous noodles which consist of a lot of noodles in the top part and fewer noodles in the bottom part, and noodles set in the middle position of the container for the sake of the homogeneous noodles in three minutes after pouring in hot water, and how to manufacture it. These were created from zero and were incubated from his strong intention. These specifics are the gifts of his passion and meticulousness. I wonder where his energy had come from.

He lived allegedly in simplicity even after the great success. His aim of business might be for prosperity of society rather than for money. This is my sheer conjecture, but there were many people who thought that. This is the most different point from how to succeed by the present western theory.


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