Nagoya and Tokyo

On Tuesday I escaped the James Bond evil villain hotel in Kikuura on the 8 am shuttle boat. It was a beautiful hotel however it reminded me so much of the lair of a James Bond villain. I had told this to Kerri and Jason at supper the previous night and they had had exactly the same conversation in the afternoon. My departure was much easier than my previous day's misadventure of having to walk around the harbour and then through the tunnels. What would James Bond have done.

I had decided to break up my trip back to Tokyo with a stop in Nagoya. From Kikuura it was a 4 hour slow train trip to Nagoya and I thought going onto Tokyo would just be too long. For some reason I hadn't been able to secure a reserved seat when I booked online. Kikuura was the origin of the train so I had no problems getting a seat. After a few stops the seats all filled up and in my car 10 people ended up standing for the trip. My seat mate was a retired American from Oregon. He had started out as a baker but had shifted into the world of food manufacturing and worked his last job with Cliff Bars before the company got bought out by a multinational corporation. As part of the employee ownership program he had got a generous buyout and then sold his house in Berkeley and moved to outside of Portland. I wonder if he made more out of his house sale but I was too polite to ask.

When I got to Nagoya, I got my hotel to recommend a barber. One of the staff was also kind enough to walk me to the friend barber shop. I told him with Google translate what I wanted and for 15 dollars I received an excellent haircut. After my haircut it was still only 1:30 pm. I had looked into what to do and realized that Toyota had got its start here in Nagoya as a textile manufacturer before going into automobiles. Toyota's car manufacturing is still located in Nagoya but they don't allow tours. Toyota does have its own museum where they chronicle the history of their textile and automobile manufacturing. The textile part of their museum had a complete inventory of working looms from the beginning to the present day. It was really neat watching them work. I took a guided tour of the car museum which chronicled Toyota's initiatives to start manufacturing cars in the twenties with the successful launch of the first passenger car and industrial truck in 1936. The guide was a little spotty on the companies history from 1939 to 1945 and didn't give a reason for why automobile manufacturing was suspended until 1954. For a while Toyota made sewing machines. She picked the history up in the 50s. There were dioramas displaying the early manufacturing process and then they had actual functioning displays demonstrating stamping equipment, the paint room and robot use. It was very interesting. I will include a video of the welding robots.

Wednesday I took a very fast bullet train to Tokyo. 2 hours but I felt a little carsick afterwards. I left my luggage at the Prince Ebisu hotel and headed out for another adventure. Prince Asaka's art deco castle build in 1936 in the Art Deco style was located close to where I was staying so I thought it would warrant a visit. It had been converted to an art gallery hosting travelling art exhibits. I walked over and when I arrived there were a lot of very well dressed women of all ages in line. Kind of like the line up for the boy band it Hiroshima. There was a poster advertising the exhibit at the entrance mainly in Japanese but also the words print and designer. I love Japanese prints so I thought that will be great and was happy to pay my money. The building from the outside was a classical beautiful Art Deco mansion. I was very excited to get inside only to realize once inside that the exhibit was all about a Finnish designer of print dresses who was extremely popular in Japan. It was a dress exhibit which I don't have much interest in. There was an interesting video documenting how the fabric was printed in Finland on an industrial scale. Many of the workers had terrible skin so I wonder if there was some reaction to the dyes. The palace with it's art deco design was pretty impressive so it wasn't a totally wasted visit. The garden outside of the palace was also beautiful so I wandered around a little before heading back to the hotel.

That night I was curious to check out who Prince Adaka was. He was a minor royal in the Japanese royal family. He was a pretty bad guy as he ordered the murder of all civilians in Nanjing then the capital of China in 1936. 100,000 civilians were killed and innumerable women were raped. It was so terrible that the Japanese Imperial Army recalled him to Japan for the duration of the war. The Americans after WW2 didn't execute him because as a member of the Royal family he has clemency. They did take away his aristocratic status and his beautiful house. Curious that none of this was mentioned at the museum.

Thursday was my last full day in Toyo. I am getting a little museumed out so I thought that I would head off to the Tokyo botanical gardens which is quite far west in Tokyo. Tokyo is quite farther north of where I have been for much of the last two weeks and fall really feels to be in the air. I walked around much of the garden and they really seemed to be winding down for the season. It wasn't until I got to the rose garden that I was impressed to observe a sea of roses of beautiful colors. All of the other gardens that I have visited in Japan have trimmed their roses back for the year so this was a real surprise. I have always had a soft spot for roses as my father in London had a rose garden which was nurtured and cherished. I even saw some more blue roses which are very unique. After the rose garden I checked out the greenhouses and was impressed by the orchid and Begonia collectionsRead more