Instant Ramen Museum & Umeda Sky Building

chillilila
Oct 20, 2016
2 min read

Breakfast at the Dormy Inn is very Japanese, which isn't really a good thing as it's mainly fish, soup, curry, & other weird things that our British stomachs really aren't use to first thing in the morning!

Matt & Kayla spent the day together so Christine, Chris & I headed to the Umeda Sky Building. It was a bit of a pain to get to, but we made it. However, when we got there, we realised that while the Sky Building was open until 10pm, the Instant Ramen Museum, which we also wanted to go to, was only open until 4pm, so we left the Sky Building without going up & decided to do the noodle factory first, then come back.

It was a reasonably long journey to the Instant Ramen Museum but easy enough to do & to find. It's free to go in & tells you all about the inventor of the instant noodle & how it's made, along with all the different types they make & have made in the past. There's also a part where you can buy a cup noodle cup for ‎¥300, draw your own design & fill it with your own choice of noodles & flavours. Despite it being mainly aimed at kids & family, I of course did that! There's loads of stuff with their mascot on, which is a little yellow chick called 'Hiyoko-chan' (ひよこちゃん) or simply 'chick'.

We headed back to the Sky Building, picking up a sandwich from a 711 on the way, & paid the ¥900 each to go up. The place didn't have the some level of service from the staff as the Tokyo Tower did: all smiles, pushing lift buttons, nodding & bowing whilst dressed in fancy uniforms, but they were smart & friendly enough. It was about an hour before sunset when we traveled up the long escalator that was in a glass tunnel which took you up to the very top floor. We then went onto the 'Floating Garden Observatory' which isn't a garden at all, but a circular walk way 173 meters up, built between the two towers that make up the Umeda Sky Building. By walking around it, you have a total 360° view of the city. After a while, we went down to the little café (Café Sky 40) where Christine bought us ice cream. We hung around for a bit while we waited for it to get dark, then Chris & I went back up to look at the city all lit up & alive. The walkway has lots of little glow-in-the-dark stones scattered on the path which was really cool.

After admiring the view for a bit, we went back to the hotel & had a bowl of noodles that are free in the evening at the hotel between 9:30 & 11:30. I wasn't expecting them to be tasty, but they really are!