Wow, Nagoya was a totally awesome adventure! I'm really glad I went, I had a great time checking out Toyota and running around the city. For once, everything went pretty much to plan, too! Very rare for me, especially in Japan, haha. I raced home from school at just after 4pm on Thursday and quickly packed my bags, called a taxi and shot out to the station. I got there just in time and waltzed through the ticket gate with my awesome little seishin juhachi kippu. I jumped out in Himeji to buy some food and meet up with Andrew. He's yet another Perthy here in Hyogo-ken, and although I didn't know him from Perth, he looked pretty familiar from around Himeji. We'd never officially met, but I'd seen him around at a few JET events and found out later that he also works at Tiger Pub sometimes. I've definitely seem him in there at least once.

So he bought a ride on the kippu from me and we headed back through the gates and up onto the platform to wait for the train. When it arrived, we were lucky enough to bag ourselves a seat. Good job too, as 4 hours standing up would have been painful! We had nearly 2 hours on the first train so we just caught up, listened to some "beats" and read some books. Andrew is a good bloke, and since he was from Perth too, it was great to be able to talk about everyday places from back there. The only other really interesting thing that happened on the first train was me trying to find a bathroom, haha. I'd had a 'road soda' (a beer while travelling), as my friend Devin calls them, for which there is always a price to pay! We'd gotten in at the end of the train without one though, unfortunately, meaning that I had to fight my way through 11 train cars to get through to the one at the other end. The train was really packed, so this turned out to be impossible until we were about 20 minutes away from Maibara - ouch :D

We finally reached Maibara at just after 8pm. For some unknown reason, the train was nearly 10 minutes late getting there. Andrew and I had never been to Maibara before so were a little worried about making the connection to our next train. Thankfully, things sorted themselves out for us though. The station was very small so there weren't too many options, and we were saved by simply following the crowd. The connecting train had waited for our late train to come in, and as the Japanese people around us started pelting towards it, we figured we should just go with the flow. Turned out to be a good choice, and we were soon on our way to Ogaki, our next stop. We even found a seat on the train, w00t!

In Ogaki we had about 20 minutes so we scouted some food. Andrew downed some Lotteria (burger fast food) while I hit up a nearby bakery for some tasty treats. We had to run back through the gates, but got onto the train and found seats again with no problems. The final ride in to Nagoya was only about 30 minutes, and then we finally arrived! Total time for me, 4 hours 45 minutes. Ouch. I would not want to do that too often.

We had planned to meet my friend Emerald, who was also attending the conference, at the station at 10pm. She had fallen quite badly sick though, and decided not to go, so it was just Andrew and I. I was rather irritated with myself when I realised that I had printed out everything except the details of how to get to the hotel. I knew it was close to a subway line and roughly where it should be, but I wasn't sure enough for us to gung-ho our way into a random subway and check it out. So instead, Andrew pointed out that a taxi would probably be hardly any more expensive and much more convenient I agreed, so we just did that. The driver was very amusing and spoke relatively good English, so it turned out to be a good decision.

At the hotel we checked in and took a bit of time to chill out before heading out into Marunouchi to explore. The hotel itself was relatively conveniently placed, although I realised afterwards that it was actually one of the furthest Toyoko Inns from Nagoya station. Had I known, I would have booked one closer, hehe. It was ok though, as it was right next to the Marunouchi subway station. Actually, I may as well plug the TI here. They're pretty cool. Not the cheapest accommodation around and quite small, but very clean, very functional, usually in great locations, free Internet and a look and feel that is the same no matter which one you go to. All good.

While the Marunouchi TI was well placed for the subway to Nagoya station, we discovered on our little jaunt that this was about all it was well placed for, haha. All we found were dead boring streets for about a kilometre in every direction, so eventually we just decided to head back to the hotel. On the way, I noticed that the sakura buds were bulging and Andrew reckoned they'd be blooming within a day or two. Good timing! We also stumbled on a convenient Yoshinoya so grabbed ourselves a cheeky beef bowl, then headed up to our rooms to catch some sleep.

After a quick breakfast downstairs in the morning, we raced out to the subway station and zoomed into Nagoya station, arriving just before 9am. We met up with everyone else right outside the subway entrance, almost by accident. Huzzah - as I said, almost everything went right this trip :) We checked in with Saito-san, the public relations lady who had been sending us all the information emails. It was cool to meet her at last. She, along with all the Toyota staff, had extremely cute little uniforms on and seemed very happy to be playing tour guide for us. Just before 9:30am they all herded us onto the bus and we kicked things off!

The first part of the tour was up to the Toyota museum. Here we learnt some interesting facts, including that Toyota was originally called "Toyoda" and that they started operations in the weaving, not automobile, industry. Talk about a bit of a difference, haha. I wasn't particularly interested in the weaving gear but became more so towards the end, when we came across the high end modern industrial machines. Ah, how far we have come since the spinning wheel, haha. From there it was on to the automotive section, where I got talking to one of the tour guides, Watanabe-san. She showed me around almost the whole place, answering my questions and showing me the Prius (which was one of the main things I wanted to see) and the iUnit (which was just totally cool). I wanted to test drive both of them, but I couldn't convince her, hehe :P While we're talking about the iUnit, actually, check it out here. It's a prototype single person transport vehicle. It's totally awesome, and looks like a funky futuristic chair on wheels. Apparently it can change shape between a slow, upright mode and a fast, laid out mode. Very cool! :D

There was some other really cool stuff in the automotive section too. Some giant robots, metal presses and materials testing tools were amongst the highlights. Toyoda-san did some serious R&D work on materials for use in the car manufacturing process, which I was quite impressed by. We'll just overlook the fact his first car design was basically a mish-mash of all the things he liked and reverse engineered from other cars on the market at the time :D

After that it was lunch with our tour guides and then off to the Toyota factory itself! I was again impressed, as the factory was well laid out, very clean and amazingly efficient. It produces 1,700 cars a day using a just in time system. I suppose we rarely think about it but a car is an incredibly complex system, and we can now build one in about 20 hours. I wouldn't know where to start even if I had the parts, let alone if I had to create the parts myself. So we visited two or three areas within the factory, the first of which was the assembly line for the cars. We saw them going from frames right up to having doors installed and then rolling along the production line being finished, tested and made ready for shipping.

The next place was my favourite, as it was the body workshop. This is where the car bodies were made from steel and welded together. We saw the amazing welding robots in action, which were totally insane. As one of the JETs said, it looked like the matrix. There's something really wierd about seeing robot arms flying around - they're so fast and precise! After that area we headed on to our final destination, the company headquarters. Here, we got to see displays of their latest technology, including how the Prius works and their plans for fuel cell vehicles. We also got to muck around with some display vehicles, including a beautiful blue Lexus. Only 80,000,000 yen :)

Our final stop was with some big wigs who 'answered' any questions we might have. There were some really good questions and they actually gave some fairly good answers. I'm no sucker for advertising or PR, but what I saw on the tour really did impress me and my opinion of Toyota has even been strengthened a bit. It needed to be, after the Corolla charade back in Australia :D I was thinking of buying one until I realised that it didn't have ABS brakes as standard. Even what I think is the world's most pathetic car, the Mitsubishi Lancer, had them standard back then :D

After grabbing a quick drink and toilet break, it was back on the bus to Nagoya station. While we were riding back, one of the tour guides came wandering back to speak to Devin and I. We'd asked her quite a few questions during the tour (my favourite being why some early Prius vehicles completely died when being driven at high speeds), so she'd lined us up for photos around the place and a quick interview about the tour. Once she'd finished with that she stayed and talked with us, and someone had the bright idea of asking her where to go for dinner/drinks in Nagoya. A relatively big group of us had planned to head out in Nagoya that night, so I guess it made sense to make use of the local knowledge, hehe. She told us about a place she knew and before we knew it, said she'd come as well and bring the other tour guides with her. I wasn't entirely sure if she meant it, but it was pretty cool of her to offer.