Nagoya and Kyoto

Today I left Takayama early in the morning to catch my train to Nagoya and then Kyoto.  I decided to explore Nagoya a bit, so I decided to take an earlier train and have a quick look at the city in the 4 hours before my fast train to Kyoto.  After a very scenic ride following the river from Takayama, I arrived at the big Nagoya station.

Nagoya is an industrial city that was completely destroyed during WWII.  In fact, 80% of the buildings in the city were destroyed in a single massive air raid.  As a result, most of the city dates from the 50s and all the "old" buildings (such as the Nagoya castle) are reconstructions of the originals.  The result is a modern city with wide streets and, in some places, little old charm.  The area around the train station has been renovated even further and contains pretty nice modern building. The Nagoya station (left) is considered the highest building in the world that contains a train station.  The station is surrounded by skyscrapers in different shapes and forms.  The city is also very friendly to tourists.  A good (English spoken) tourist office directs you to the main attraction.  In addition, to make things even easier, there are icons on the sidewalks that direct you in what direction to go.  My plan was to go to the Toyota Museum of Technology and Innovation, and the Noritake factory (primarily because it is close to the museum).

The Toyota Museum is divided in two areas: a textile museum and a automobile museum.  This sounds at first as a weird combination until you learn that Toyota started as a manufacturer of looms. 

Toyoda worked on designing a non-stop loom that would minimize the amount of labor and that could work at high speeds.  In 1924, he finished his loom model G, the world first non-stop shuttle change automatic loom.  The loom also incorporated a number of protective and safety devices which made it a huge success both in Japan and abroad.  During my visit to the museum, I learned that a loom is quite a sophisticated device that incorporates power transmission, high speed components, automation (via punched cards), and iron casting.  These technologies are not dissimilar to what is needed to produce an automobile.  A fun exhibit in the museum gave me opportunity to use a traditional Japanese loom which is a lot harder to operate than I thought at first look.

The rest of the museum is dedicated to automobiles and their production.  The first Toyoda car was the model AA, first produced in 1936.  It was a real challenge to manufacture it as steal production in Japan was in their infancy at that time and there were not foundries good enough to produce the steel needed to create a car.   The son of the founder of Toyota approached the problem by creating a metal lab and to quickly creating prototypes and iterating on his designs, materials, and procedures, until they were able to produce most of the parts for their cars.

Here is a trivia question for readers of my blog: when was the name Toyoda changed to Toyota?  Extra credit if you are able to tell me why.  The first 3 people that send me email with the right answer will get a small souvenir at the end of my trip.

An impressive area of the museum is dedicated to automobile production and has some of the machinery for producing a car in working display.  This includes the iron cast press, robots for welding, and the robots for painting a car.  Quite an amazing array of technology.  There were also a prototype of a personal transportation device of the future and a robot that would play the trumpet every other hour.

From the museum, I went to the Noritake Gardens where the famous fine China factory of the same name is located.  I didn't have the time to tour the floor, so I just went to the visitor center and "outlet" store. I don't think I'd ever buy their product, but it was interesting to learn how it was manufactured and how much is done by hand even these days.  After a quick lunch by one of the fountains, I headed to the train station to catch the bullet train to Kyoto.  

After arriving in Kyoto, I headed to the Izuyasu Ryokan which was going to be my home for the next three nights.  It wasn't hard to find it using the map provided by Japanese Guesthouses, although the lack of English signs at the Ryokan kept me wondering if I was entering the right one (there are many ryokans in that area).  The Ryokan was much bigger than the one in Takayama with all rooms having private toilets.  I got a very nice room with a small veranda and views of the garden at the back of the house.  After the traditional welcome green tea and a small dessert, I was ready to start exploring Kyoto.

To be honest, my first impression of Kyoto wasn't the most positive one.  I was expecting a traditional city full of temples and old houses and the first thing I saw was the ultra-modern train station.  The building is beautiful and very tasteful, but it didn't match what I was expecting of Kyoto.  To make things worse, the first thing I saw when I stepped out of the station was the Kyoto tower.  A tower that looks like it was dropped in front of the train station by some aliens from a 50s movie.  Fortunately, the modern Kyoto is restricted to the area around the train station and the rest of Kyoto, a city that was untouched during WWII, is full of historical buildings, temples, and shrines.

The first temple I visited, just across my Ryokan, was the impressive Higashi-Hoganji temple complex. These massive complex claim to have the biggest (by volume) wooden building in the world.  Although one visited It used to be a single temple, but a philosophical dispute created a break that split the complex in two independent temples.  After that, I went for a walk for more pictures for the futuristic train station and back to the Ryokan for dinner and a Japanese bath.