The Real Toyota City

I just finished two days in Nagoya which as Japanese cities go seems pretty quiet as compared to the other cities I’ve been to. But lots of industry here which I find intriguing. On my first day I headed south of downtown to the Shinkansen and Maglev museum, it was a really great museum with lots of displays (in English). The Japanese really have rail service nailed , but again they have to with 142,000,000 people, they can really do things at a huge scale and with incredible precision, all the train’s whether mainline or the Metro all operate on a tight on time schedule.
Yesterday I  went to Toyota City but not on the famous Automile about 1.5 hours outside of Nagoya, I had booked a reservation of the Toyota factory tour (in English) and museum, once again incredibly interesting, the plant manufactured 5 different types of vehicles simultaneously on the same assembly line which is about a kilometre long. Parts are brought in from all over Japan and are assembled within hours of being brought to the plant. They manufacture about 160 cars on a nine hour shift. The factory museum showed the technology the factories use and new models that Toyota makes at this plant and new electric and hydrogen fuel vehicles, it was time well spent. After I travelled back to Nagoya I visited the Toyota commemorative museum, another exce

llent museum all about how Toyota evolved from a company that made looms for the fabric industry and then evolved into the automobile industry. It was a huge museum inside of an old loom factory.  By the end of the day I was well informed about Toyota. I cannot get over how much industry is here and the sheer size of the factories, Canada could definitely learn a few things from the Japanese.
I’m heading up to Yokohama for two days my hotel is along the harbour I am not entirely sure I what I’m going to do but they say it’s a very nice city with lots to do.

Shinkansen Museum