11/11 - Osaka Museum of Housing and Living

So continued our tour of museums in Osaka on the backs of our Osaka Unlimited Passes and the accompanying coupons.  We up and over to the north-central part of the city.  Just above Tenjinbashisuji 6-chome [天神橋筋 6 -丁目] subway station, there is a municipal office building.  It was the most unassuming building, but it houses a museum on it's top three stories.  [By the way, that must be one of the strangest subway station names, I have ever seen - H]

We took the elevator directly up to the top of the museum and gained admission with our coupons.  We rounded the corner just beyond the entrance and was instantly greeted with the faux sky canopy above a total re-creation of an Osaka street scene of the early 20th century.  On this top floor, we were level with the rooftops of the re-created buildings with the "indoor sun" shining brightly over the township below.  It all obviously looks quite staged from this perspective.

Down a set of stairs and we were right down at street level.  The museum wasn't all that busy because it's not a large attraction.  However, I would say that the whole street scene experience was very well done.  There are no vendors or actors in the street, but the stores and homes that line the street are very detailed and full of little nooks and corners to explore on your own.

The main street was relatively wide and open.  The indoor sun shone brightly from the floodlights above and filled the street with a natural glow.  All the homes and storefronts were illuminated by the "sun".  In one storefront, there was a whole shelf of small trinkets or toys.  In another, there were the drawers for traditional medicinal ingredients.  It reminded me of what traditional Chinese medicine shops are like, except I couldn't figure out what the labels said.  Actually, I don't know what half the labels in a Chinese medicine shop say anyway.

All the homes and shops in the middle of the exhibit were fully built with rooms in the back.  When you reach the back of the buildings, you reach a small alley in the back.  The alley was much narrower and you could even stumble across a little shrine in one of the corners if you took the time to explore.  Again, the detail of each room was much appreciated.  Careful exploration certainly paid off with pleasant surprises.

While exploring the back alley, the "weather" began to change.  The sky darkened and the sound of the wind picked up.  Pretty soon, the sound of rain pelting the rooftops was echoing throughout the street scene.  Then lightning and thunder rolled on through.  The storm went as quickly as it came and the sun started to shine again.  Rain drops could be heard dripping from the tiles above to the ground below.  Thankfully, the museum didn't go for the full 4D effect with water.

After finding some replica toilets, which were fortunately never used as toilets, night started to fall.  The sky turned a royal purple for the sunset, then an almost complete darkness for night.  The sounds of crickets and owls now took over the soundscape.  Even a tiny moon made it's way across the ceiling above.  We made our way back through another building to the main street.  All the shops and homes were now lit from within.  It was an old-time Osaka night scene.

We exited the exhibit and made our way to the next floor.  By now, you should expect there to be lots of dioramas and miniatures in a Japanese museum.  This floor was all dioramas and miniatures.  The delicate and detailed displays showed scenes to the beginning of Modern Japanese history.  The scene of tightly packed buildings with a large boulevard running down the middle was typical of early urban modernization.

There were also scenes of various activities that happened in Osaka.  One was a moving miniature display of life in Shinsaibashi [心齋橋] in the early day.  Another was another moving miniature of a festival that took place on the river.  If you like miniatures, you will love this part of the museum.

The regular price of admission to the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living is ¥600, but we got in for free with our Osaka Unlimited Pass.  But even at ¥600, I think this museum would have been well worth the small admission fee.  We were very happy that we visited this museum.  It would have been very easy to overlook this small attraction.

11/11 - Modern Transportation Museum

H being the transit geek that he is, the Modern Transportation Museum was high on his list of places to visit.  Fortunately for us, we still had another day on our Osaka Unlimited Pass and it included 20% off of admission to the Transport Museum.

From the guesthouse of the Taiwanese lady, we hopped onto the Chuo Line [中央] at Hommachi [本町]Station and rode the subway to Bentencho [弁天町]Station.  A very quick ride at ¥230.

Originally, we thought that breakfast was included in our accommodation at the guesthouse, but we found out that it wasn't the lady at the guesthouse explained that it cost extra to have food included.  This differed from what N's travel book and the website had suggested.  N said that it was probably because she hadn't looked at the website for a few months.  We weren't originally expecting to stay at the guesthouse; it was a last-minute addition to our itinerary.

So without breakfast in our tummies, we promptly stepped into a McDonald's right by Bentencho [弁天町] Station.  It was still fairly early in the morning and there were a lot of teens in their school unis taking in breakfast before heading to class.  McDonald's in Japan has such a dizzying array of choices for their meals.  H had a Salad Marinade McMuffin with Cafe au Lait (H loves Japanese McD's cafe au lait).  N had a regular Sausage McMuffin with juice in a Tamagotchi cup.

After a quick bite, we were first in line for the museum this rainy rainy day.  There was a lot on display at the Modern Transportation Museum. The museum is divided into many rooms that are all to the left of the main hallway.  The rooms are more like sections because there are no doorways to go through.

The museum starts oddly enough with a section about the technology of tomorrow.  There is a large magnetic levitation prototype on display and some smaller models of the Shinkansen [新幹線], Japan's famous bullet train.  Then after visiting the future, you step back into the past to the birth and growth of the railway in Japan. No shortage of dioramas here.

Then you come across an interactive section where you can control some of the models on display.  They obviously made the place accessible to preschoolers because there was a section in the middle of the interactive models where little kids could sneak in and pop there heads up in a bubble.  We totally lucked out because a preschool was on a field trip to the museum.  The kids made for some fun candids.

In another section, they focused on the current "rolling stock" or trains of the Kansai region.  They had displays for each major railway company operating in the area.  There was a lot to look at, but not everything was in English.  I'm sure H would have spent a whole here if he could.

Along the back of the sections, there was a life-size mock-up of a Shinkansen train complete with a drivers' cabin.  You could try your hand at operating a train or take your chances as "rail kill" in front of the bullet train.

All the way at the very end of the museum, just past the one section on non-train transportation, there was the giant Model Train Panorama Room.  Did I say the Japanese love their dioramas and miniatures.  This was a large miniature world of rail just behind a large number of windows.  It was impressive.  We were lucky we beat the kids into the room; otherwise, we would have had to fight for spots along the glass and with their fingerprints all over the place.  This is one of those places that H wishes he had an ultra wide angle lens for his camera.

After wandering around some of the other exhibits and the actual trains parked outside the museum, H had to visit the gift shop.  After deliberating on what souvenir to purchase, he finally settled on two small model trains.  One was a maroon Hankyu [阪急] train like one we had ridden on our way to Arima Onsen [有馬温泉].  The other was the Narita Express, which we had ridden back in 2006 to get us from the Narita Airport to Shinjuku [新宿]in Tokyo.  Soon enough, it was time to get going again.  Next station: the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living.

11/5 - Instant Ramen Museum (Ikeda)

Full day number 3.  We've stayed 2 nights in Osaka, but we really haven't explored it yet.  This morning, we were off to Ikeda just northwest of Osaka.  It's still in Osaka prefecture, but is a little ways out from the Osaka city limits.

We had to take the Hankyu Takarazuka line out to Ikeda.  If you ever find yourself in Osaka and ride a Hankyu train, you will find that the whole fleet of trains is a distinctive maroon colour.  It looked impressive with all the Hankyu trains loading and unloading in Hankyu Umeda station.

This day, we were in search of the Instant Ramen Museum.  It's formally known as the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum.  Mr. Ando is the founder of the first ever instant ramen in Japan, known as Chikin Ramen. We initially had some trouble find the museum.  There were some signs at Ikeda station pointing to which exit to go, but they were all in Japanese.  If you don't read Japanese, you could very easily miss these signs.

Just outside Ikeda Station, we grabbed a quick breakfast at a small Western style restaurant.  N just grabbed a quick bite of pizza toast and I had a slightly larger American style breakfast.  It was actually really quiet in the restaurant.  We weren't sure if we beat the rush or just missed the rush.

We then walked quickly down to the Museum.  N booked us for an Making Instant Noodle session on the museum's website.  So we had to arrive early in the morning at a certain time.  Apparently we had booked spots 47 and 48 out of 48.  So who were the other 46 persons? We arrived at the museum to join a 46 upper elementary school children in making instant ramen.  I was definitely the oldest in the room.  I may have even been older than their teacher.

The process of making the instant ramen noodles was very similar to making pasta.  We had to mix the flour and oil together to create the noodle material.  We also had a special hand-crank machine to flatten the mixture.  Then we used the same machine to cut the noodles into its stringy form.  We didn't actually get to do the frying, though.  They had a whole team of workers gather our soft, stringy noodles and put them into the giant deep fryer in their kitchen.  Then at the end, we get to keep the final product.  We even had to design our own instant ramen package.  Oh poor unartistic me.

After the noodle making session was done, we wandered the museum a little. There was the great historic timeline of instant noodles all starting with Chikin Ramen many decades ago.  There was also a replica of Momofuku Ando's humble shack where he started creating Chikin Ramen many years ago.

Then, we realized we made a slight mistake.  Instead of wandering the few exhibits in the museum, we should have really made a B-line for the Cup Noodle area.  In the Cup Noodle area, you can design your own Cup Noodle cup and get it filled with freshly made noodles and flavouring.  Unfortunately, our 46 noodle making accomplices had beat us out and got to the Cup Noodle area already.  Which meant what is normally a 10-15 minute activity, took about an hour.  In any case, it was pretty neat to see the giant set up for putting noodles and flavouring into your own personal Cup Noodle cup.  It was quite the assembly line production complete with inflatable see-through bag to protect your precious creation.

After all that creating noodles, we needed to consume some noodles for lunch.  In the back of the museum is a selection of instant noodle and drink vending machines.  No need for a restaurant in a place that is built upon the word instant.  We each purchased an instant noodle.  N had a Wakayama style instant noodle complete with one real piece of dehydrated meat included.  I got a duck flavoured noodle of some sort.  We also got some drinks - a green tea for N and a Cafe au Lait for myself (for some reason, I was craving coffee a lot while in Japan).

We downed our instant lunch quickly because we wanted to get to Arima Onsen quickly.  The more time we spent in Arima Onsen, the more worth our stay there would be.  Arima was going to be our big splurge of the trip.