Toyotathon: Museum Edition

"THIS WEEK ONLY, GET DOWN TO YOUR LOCAL TOYOTA MUSEUM FOR THE TOYOTATHON; DON'T MISS OUT ON THIS LEARNING OPPORTUNITY WITH OUR BEST ENTRANCE RATES YET!!", exclaimed the Fake toyota commercial playing in my head as I read up on things to do in Nagoya.

Having enjoyed the Mazda Museum and loving nerdy stuff, I set off to see the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology . On my way I enjoyed another Nagoya specialty: Ogura toast. It's the typical milk bread toast, but with a sweet red bean paste spread on top. A tasty combo!

Getting to the museum, it was a large warehouse-like building complex. It was the original site of the Toyoda (spelling intentional, family name) textile factory. The Toyoda business started in textiles where they made remarkable innovations in manufacturing and automation, which later was able to fund them branching into the automotive world. This museum covered both, and gave an extremely detailed look into how textiles are made, from cotton to final fabric. A lot of the advancements were in automation, where new designs allowed for automatic passing of the weft, auto weft replacement, etc. I knew nothing of textile manufacturing before this, and really learned a lot. They had the original looms created all the way up to modern ones built in the last few years. Amazing technology and the exhibit was like an in-person "how-it's-made" episode.

Continuing that theme into the automotive section, they started with live demonstrations of casting, forging, and milling! In my job, I see milling pretty often, but forging and casting were a treat to see. They forged small connecting arms, cast tiny engine blocks, and then face milled the engine blocks. One of the cooler museum demonstrations I've seen. Moving forward, they had the start of the automotive history of Toyoda, where they initially focused on material science. They had ingstrom, brinell, and other material testing tools from the early 1900s; I was ecstatic to see them but I might have been a niche part of the tour group given my occupation. They then explained how the Toyoda family decided to change the company to Toyota to separate from family affairs, make it easier to pronounce, and even reduce the hiragana stroke count to a lucky number 7. Not sure if that's why my 4Runner is a tank, but I'll take any luck available.
The rest of the tour had historic automobiles from Toyota and a simulated manufacturing plant. This included massive panel forming machines, painting mockups, and a more modern assembly line welding process. To cap off the tour, they had a Toyota robot that could play the violin, albeit a slightly out of tune violin. It's amazing that the company started in wooden looms and now has instrument playing robots; goes to show how insane the technology boom of the last 150 years has been.
I had no plans to see this museum (or even Nagoya) when I started this trip, but it was another pleasant surprise. I was tiring of the heat though, so I decided the next week would be up north, and flew to Hokkaido the next morning.Read more