Choosing fast and cheap over high-end chic in Yokohama

Looking at Yokohama's Minato Mirai, which means 'Port of the Future'. Ko Sasaki for the New York Times

Belly-warming meal

At Kisoba Suzuichi, the black-aproned women behind the curtained counter smiled and pointed out the noodle options, and asked if I wanted a vegetable tempura cake on top; I saw eggs on the shelf behind them and requested one, too. There were no tables or chairs, so I ate my noodles while seated on the curb, businessmen on either side of me. All of us bent over our bowls, heads down, as if penitent before the street-food stand. It was just the right kind of belly-warming meal to reset my body's clock.

Just southeast of the train station, Yokohama has an expansive waterfront with a central business district, Minato Mirai, which means "Port of the Future". It's a great place to get some walking in, particularly during special events like the Yokohama Triennale art fair (the 2014 edition just wrapped up earlier this month). In recent years, Minato Mirai has been developed with high-end hotels, office towers, shopping malls and a fascinating array of museums. One of these is the CupNoodles Museum, a surprisingly sophisticated tribute to one of the world's simplest dishes - instant ramen - and a whirlwind survey of noodle cuisines from around the world (admission, 500 yen; children free).

Five floors of interactive exhibits tell the tale of Momofuku Ando, who, in 1958, after a year of backyard-shed tinkering, invented a just-add-hot-water chicken ramen that became a sensation in postwar Japan. In 1971, after a research trip to the United States to observe how Americans ate, he went on to perfect the concept further, with Cup Noodles: an instant ramen that could be cooked and eaten in its container. Some exhibits at the museum glorify Ando to a ludicrous extent - one tableau places him alongside Einstein and Beethoven. Then again, my mother still talks about surviving on the cheap noodle packs as a teenager in Hong Kong during the early 1960s. (As penny-pinching college students, my roommates and I regularly smuggled Cup Noodles into ski resort cafeterias all over Vermont and Maine, but that's a less dramatic tale.)