The Yokohama Cup Noodles Museum With Kids. A Complete Guide For Families.
If you’re planning a family trip to Japan, then the Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum is one of those lesser-known attractions that definitely deserves a place on your itinerary. We were planning to pop in for an hour, stayed for three hours, and it became the unexpected highlight of our Yokohama day trip.
Dedicated to both Cup Noodles and the inventor of the instant noodle, Momofuku Ando, this is an incredibly modern and interactive museum that offers so much more than exhibits. You can design your own personalised Cup Noodle cup and fill it with your own unique recipe combo. Book a session to make noodles from scratch. Eat noodles from around the world, including cup noodle flavoured ice cream (yes, really!) and then kids can play in the colourful Cup Noodle park, an indoor play area where they ‘become a noodle’ and explore the manufacturing process via slides, climbing nets, and ball pits!
We’re a family of four, and at the time of our visit the boys were 10 and 13. We found that the Cup Noodle Museum genuinely appealed to the whole family: there would be something for toddlers and teenagers her, but also enough learning opportunity and nostalgia to keep adults engaged too!
This guide covers everything you need to know before you visit the Cup Noodle Museum in Yokohama, including what you need to book before you go (and how to get those on the day attraction tickets when you arrive), accessibility information, age restrictions, and all of our trademark honest reviews and practical tips.
Let’s dive in!
QUICK GUIDE BOX
Tor’s Attraction Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Time needed: 2-3 hours
Cost: 500 yen per adult.
This is a fully accessible, buggy and wheelchair friendly museum with lift access to every floor. It’s modern, and all displays are presented in both Japanese and English. It’ also all indoors, making it the best rainy day activity in Yokohama
Our Verdict: This is one of the best family attractions in the city. We loved the interactive displays. It’s educational and surprisingly inspirational too. And the Cup Noodle Factory experience was a trip highlight for the whole family!
Heads up! This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you click and make a purchase, I might earn a very small commission – at no extra cost to you. This helps to keep the blog going. Thanks for the support!
Is The Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum Worth Visiting?
Cup Noodles are my guilty pleasure: I think that’s probably true of anyone that was a student in the 90s and 00s. But you don’t have to have an interest in Cup Noodles (or even have eaten one before) to have a great time at the Yokohama Cup Noodles Museum. And that’s why it’s definitely worth visiting!
In my opinion, it’s one of the best-value family attractions in the city, and it’s even worth taking a day trip out of Tokyo to experience. In so many museums children, and particularly younger children, can lose interest so quickly. But this is an attraction designed to be interactive from start to finish. You don’t just read information boards, you become a part of the action. You make, touch, play, and you do it all as a family.
From designing your own personalised Cup Noodles cup and flavour to learning how they were invented, we loved this museum because it was so engaging and hands-on. And there’s so much to do here! More than I would have ever expected from a museum dedicated the humble pot noodle!
Because it’s all indoors, it’s a great rainy day activity near Tokyo (it rained all day on the day we visited) and because it’s fully air conditioned, it’s actually a great place to escape the summer heat and humidity to. We planned to spend an hour here, actually stayed for three hours, but there are enough activities that you could keep a family engaged for even longer than that.
Where Is The Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum?
The Yokohama Cup Noodles Museum is in the Minato Mirai waterfront district of Yokohama, and if you’re staying in Tokyo, it’s around a 30-40 minute journey. Minato Mirai is a great place to visit if you’re travelling with kids: the museum is located opposite Cosmo World (Yokohama’s theme park) and in front of the cruise port, where our boys loved watching the big liners coming in.
The full address for you navigation is: 2-3-4 Shinko, Naka-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa, 231-0001
Getting to the Cup Noodle Museum From Tokyo
We visited the Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum as a day trip from Tokyo, which is the most popular and common way that tourists visit. The good news is, this inter-city adventure is much easier than it sounds!
- If you’re staying near Tokyo Station, take the JR Tokaido Line, JR Keihin-Tohoku Line or JR Yokosuka Line to Yokohama Station. From there take the Minatomirai Line to Minatomirai Station: this is the route we took, and it’s around a 8 minute walk to the museum from the station.
- If you’re staying near Shibuya Station, take the Tokyu Toyoko Line straight from Shibuya to Minatomirai station. One line, no changing, it couldn’t be any easier! This journey takes around 35 minutes.
If you’re travelling with young children with little legs, and trying to minimise your walking as much as possible, you could consider the Akaikutsu sightseeing bus. This is a hop-on hop-off bus that explores Yokohama, and has a stop close to the Cup Noodle Museum entrance.
Buying Tickets To The Cup Noodle Museum Yokohama
The best way to buy tickets for the Cup Noodle Museum Yokohama is directly via their website.
This is one of the most budget friendly attractions with tickets costing just 500 yen per adult (£2.28/$3.08) and children high school age and younger go free.
If you want to visit the My Cup Noodle Factory and design your own cup noodle (I highly recommend that you do! You’ll find more information about this below) then that is an additional charge of 500 yen (£2.28/$3.08) per person, regardless of age.
The slots for this experience book up quickly, so I recommend booking this in advance, at the same time as you purchase your tickets.
Tickets go on sale at 10:00 on the first day of each month for the entry in the next month. We wanted to visit in March, so we booked our tickets on the 1st February, for example. You don’t have to be that organised, and you can book as late as the day before you plan to visit, but the earliest slots for the My Cup Noodle Factory experience go pretty fast, and we wanted to beat the crowds and get the first time slot of the day.
I would recommend doing this as we didn’t queue for anything, but the queues were really building up as we left.
What Can You Do Inside?
The Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum is so much more than a classic museum. Its housed inside a brand new building that is sleek and minimal, almost clinical, when you enter, thanks to it’s stark white and chrome. But this only served to make the vibrant colours of the displays, particularly the noodle packaging, really pop! The deeper you go into the museum, the more vibrant it becomes.
This is a museum that’s been built to be playful and fun. And so much of it has been designed specifically with children in mind! Highlights include:
My Cup Noodles Factory
Without doubt the best thing you can do in the Yokohama Cup Noodles Museum is visit the My Cup Noodles Factory. The premise is both so simple, and so unique!
You’re given a blank Cup Noodles cup, and then you have all the time you want to sit and personalise it in whatever way you see fit – for kids (and adults!) that love a little craft time, this is a dream come true! We’d been so hectic up until this point, so taking some time out to sit calmly drawing and being creative with each other felt like such a treat.
When you’re happy with your cup design, you move on to the Noodle Factory stations. Here you choose your toppings, your flavour powder, and your noodles are added, heat sealed, and ready for you to take home. There is a selection of a dozen topping options, but you choose four per Cup Noodle.
To add the noodles to the pop or heat seal the packaging, there are levers that kids can spin and turn to help operate the machinery. My youngest in particular loved this, and it was a great addition for kids to help them feel more involved in the process.
I’ve mentioned this before but it’s worth repeating. The My Cup Noodle Factory is not included in your Cup Noodle Museum entry. It has an additional charge of 500 yen, but more importantly, you have to pre-book a timed entry slot. You can do this on the day if there’s any availability left, but to get the best slots, and particularly if you want a morning slot, I strongly recommend booking this in advance.
Cup Noodles Park
If you have primary school age children then they will LOVE the Cup Noodles Park. Children effectively imagine that they’ve been shrunken down to the size of a noodle, and then have fun learning about the entire CUPNOODLES manufacturing process, from making the noodles to shipping them out. This is all done through a play area, with the flash drying done on spinning tops and the shipping process replicated on slides.
There were climbing nets, ball pits, and staff everywhere to help out and explain where they were in the process to the children. It was a lot of fun, and a great way for kids to run off some steam that you wouldn’t neccessarily expect to find in a museum like this.
Like so many of the attractions in the Cup Noodle Museum Yokohama, there is an extra charge for this playground. It’s 500 yen per child for a 30 minute session. You can’t book this in advance, you have to book via the desk on the third floor (next to the playground) on the day. Again, we arrived early to have our pick of the slots and get one that worked around our other plans in the museum.
It’s important to note that there are age and height restrictions on this attraction. No adults allowed sadly, and our 13 year old wasn’t allowed to join the fun either, even if he was desperate to!
This if for primary school (elementary school children) up to age 11 with the minimum age to participate being 3 years old, and a minimum height restriction of 90cm. There is no maximum height restriction, with that being driven by age instead.
Momofuku Theater
We were ushered into the Momfuku Theater from the exhibitions without really knowing what to expect, but this ended up being an underrated highlight of the experience, because Momofuku Ando’s story is so inspirational. Particularly for teaching children to be resilient, the overcome challenges, and to never give up.
MOMOFUKU TV uses CG animation to tell the story of how Momofuku Ando overcame great adversity to achieve globally significant inventions. Set to a background of failed businesses, economic adversity, and food shortages across Japan following war and environmental disaster, Ando became determined to invent something significant, and he was prepared to give up everything to get there.
Ando was 48 years old when he invented instant chicken ramen, and 61 years old when he invented the Cup Noodle. And in an act of generosity, when he invented his famous flash frying technique, he then shared his patented process with other manufacturers to prevent fake, dangerous, and sub-standard products from flooding the market. Ando believed that “peace will come to the wold when people have enough to eat.”
The story was truly inspirational for all four of us, the film includes moments of comedy as well as original footage. But it’s important to note that it’s filmed in Japanese, of course, with subtitles in English. Meaning it wouldn’t be suitable for childen that couldn’t read (they could sit through it if you wanted them to, of course, but they wouldn’t understand what was
Chicken Ramen Factory
The only paid-for activity we didn’t try in the Noodle Museum was the Chicken Ramen Factory. The charge for this is 600 yen for elementary school students and 1,200 yen for both adults, and junior high school students and older. You have to be six years old, or older, to sign up for this one. It’s not for toddlers or pre-schoolers.
This is effectively a cookery class. You don your apron, work in pairs, and learn to make your own noodles from scratch, working to produce your own dough. What’s nice is that the class is taught in a huge open work shop with long expanses of glass walls, so you can actually watch the class from the outside even if you’re not taking part in it.
The instructions for the class are given in Japanese. Of course the instructor is giving visual demonstrations too, so you can learn by watching. And there are multi-language instruction sheets available that you can read to help you follow along too.
Food and Drink
Whether you choose to have lunch or just stop for a snack, you’re going to want to eat at the Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum! We all loved the restaurant which is called NOODLES BAZAAR –WORLD NOODLES ROAD and is set up like a street food market. Around the outside of the space are stalls selling noodles from various countries from all over the world, as well as drinks and desserts.
Believe it or not, a whole family of four can have lunch here for around £15 total! To give you an idea of the prices, noodles from any of the countries are 500 yen per serving (half size bowl), then you’ll pay 250 yen for a Mini-Chicken Ramen, which comes in cute chicken packaging and is perfect for kids.
It’s just 400 yen for dessert from various countries, including the famous Cup Noodle ice cream! We had to try it for the novelty and i’m definitely glad we did, but honestly? Not one of us would order it again! It’s chicken broth flavoured ice cream with freeze dried savoury toppings, and is just didn’t appeal to my palette!
Then it’s 200 yen for juice from various countries (each stall has it’s own option) or 250 yen for a cup and access to the free refill fountain drinks.
Is This Better Than The Osaka Cup Noodle Museum?
There are two Cup Noodles Museums in Japan. One is in Yokohama, and the other is in Osaka, and is included in our guide to Things to Do in Osaka with Kids. The Cup Noodle Museum in Osaka was opened first, in 1999, while the Cup Noodle Museum in Yokohama was built more recently, opening in 2011.
The two museums are very different, but in my opinion, the Cup Noodles Museum in Yokohama is the better choice for families. It offers the Cup Noodles Park play area and the Cup Noodles Bazaar restaurant: you won’t find either of these in Osaka. If you’re a real noodle purist and want to visit the birthplace of instant noodles, Osaka is the place to be. But for a more fun, interactive family experience, I would choose the Yokohama site.
Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum FAQs
Is The Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum Worth Visiting?
The Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum is a world class attraction and well worth visiting.
Is The Cup Noodles Museum Free?
No, there is a charge for adults to visit the Cup Noodles Museum Yokohama. This charge is 500 yen per adult. However children of all ages, including high school students, can enter the museum for free.
If you want to take part in any of the extra on-site activities, many of them have an extra charge too. The My Cup Noodle Factory experience costs 500 yen, and does the Cup Noodle Playground. The Chicken Ramen Factory costs between 600-1,200 yen per person.
Which Activities Do You Need To Pre-book At The Cup Noodle Museum Yokohama?
I recommend pre-booking your Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum Admission, to guarantee entry. Tickets go on sale at 10:00 on the first day of each month for the entry in the next month. At the same point, you can and should pre-book an choose time slots for the My Cup Noodle Factory experience and, if you want to do it, the Chicken Ramen Factory experience.
You can’t book the Cup Noodle Playground in advance, you need to buy tickets on the day. You also can’t book the restaurant in advance: it has a very casual feel, so just turn up and find a table.
Are There Lifts At The Cup Noodle Museum Yokohama?
Yes, there are lifts at the Cup Noodle Museum Yokohama. The whole museum is fully accessible, and because it was built in 2011, accessibility was considered as part of the design, which isn’t true of so many other museums in Japan. That means it’s both wheelchair and pushchair friendly. There is also escalator access between the 4 floors if the lifts are crowded and that would suit you better.
Can You Buy Souvenirs At The Cup Noodle Museum Yokohama?
Yes you can! Like almost all modern museums, there is an ‘exit via the gift shop’ right next to the museum entrance. As you would expect there are huge varieties of omiyage (Japan travel gifts) but you’ll also find fun and unusual souviners too. I became slightly obsessed with a candle shaped like a Cup Noodle cup (and with Cup Noodle flavours) but luckily sense, and our lack of luggage space, prevailed.
Is The Cup Noodle Museum Yokohama Suitable For Teenagers?
Our oldest son had just turned 13 when we visited the Yokohama Cup Noodle museum, and not only did he enjoy the experience, he found it inspirational.
Momofuku Ando’s story is a fascinating one, packed full of all those characteristics teens need. Strength in the face of adversity, resilience in the face of failure. It’s worth learning more about him even if you don’t visit the museum.
And in the museum itself, teens will love the My Cup Noodle Factory, as well as the abundance of unusual snacks in the Bazaar. My boys ended up trying three different types of noodles and all the odd ice creams. There’s nowhere better to feed hollow-legged teens on a budget!
Final Thoughts and Further Reading
The Cup Noodle Museum Yokohama is such a great, family-friendly museum experience that often doesn’t feel like a conventional museum. It explores a uniquely Japanese problem that ultimately became a global solution, and gives amazing insight into the life and a career of the man that created it.
Ultimately though, the Cup Noodle Museum is a lot of fun, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously (it’s a museum about noodles, after all!) It was designed with kids in mind, and is a spot that’s well worth adding to your itinerary.
Looking for more inspiration for you next trip to Japan? Check out some of our other guides and resources:
- Yokohama Day Trip from Tokyo with Kids (2026): The Perfect One Day Itinerary
- 8 Best Day Trips From Tokyo For 2026 (That You Can Book Online Now!)
- Best Theme Parks in Japan for Kids. 2026 Guide, Tickets, Tips and Rankings
- Tokyo Family Travel Guide
- Pokemon Tokyo Experiences And Attractions (2026 Guide For Pokemon Fans!)
WANT MORE POSTS LIKE THIS STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX? HIT SUBSCRIBE BELOW
Heads up! This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you click and make a purchase, I might earn a very small commission – at no extra cost to you. This helps to keep the blog going. Thanks for the support!
