Calling the Yokohama Ramen Museum, a museum is stretching the definition of the word. It does feature a '1:1 reproduction' of a 1950-60's era Tokyo Neighborhood and a small ish 1/2 floor museum, all in Japanese about ramen. The main feature of this 'museum' is the 9 ramen restaurants inside the museum.
Each of the 9 restaurants have Ramen from different regions of Japan. Although I consider Okinawa Soba Ramen, it is called soba even though it lacks all the things that define Soba, it is neither cold, nor does it have buckwheat noodles. Okinawa Soba = Ramen. I don't quite get why they don't change the name from Okinawa Soba to Okinawa Ramen. For all your Okinawa Soba needs there is a restaurant in Tokyo that will serve you the delicacies of Okinawa, and apparently Yokohama has a Little Okinawa area. Kelly and I walked around the 2 floor down? You enter the museum at ground level at the top most floor, this is much like Sanrio Puroland, like most other buildings in Japan the museum's upper floors(above ground) might be business or residential.
Much to my delight they had vintage motorscooters on display, a bit warn down from visitors thought I hope they kept them in working condition.
Looks like they got a hold of a few Fuji Rabbits, yeah you know the film company Fujifilm they made scooters. Here are a few okay photos of the 'upper floor'.
They had a few 'characters' to fill in the atmosphere; there was a fortune teller, a policeman, and a school girl managing a store. Most of the 'shops' were facades with locked doors. They had a bath house / movie theater stairway, there was a doctor's office, a police station. Kelly has a photo of me using the phonebooth. I was surprised that this reproduction was supposed to be from 50 years ago, reminded me of the small narrow streets in Okinawa. Either Okinawa is trapped in a long ago era or like everything else in Japan not much has actually changed since that time.
Eventually Kelly and I picked one of the restaurants to have dinner at, Ganja. Ganja sells 'Dip' ramen, served and eaten much how soba is. They gave us a bowl of pork marrow soup(its awesome trust me) and a bowl of noodles, you take the noodles and dip them into the soup bowl.
It seems there was a lot of local regular customers visiting. I saw a group of salarymen at one table clearly holding a work drinking party, called a Izakaya. It looks like they sell yearly passes for the locals, it was about ¥300 yen about $3 to get in. The Ramen Museum was within walking distance of the Shin-Yokohama train station. It was about a 45 minute subway train from tokyo, it was possible to take the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) for ¥3500 to shave off 5 minutes of travel. We took the Subway which cost ¥780.
If your looking for more ramen history, there is in Yokohama yet another ramen museum which focuses around Instant Ramen, The Cup Ramen Museum. Not up in the Kanto region theres one in osaka, the birthplace of instant ramen.
I first heard of this ramen museum in college and was very happy to be able to finally visit it. Tottaly worth it if you have the time. Shin-Yokohama is a JR and Shinkansen stop meaning you can use a JR pass to visit it.