Toyota Motor Company

As part of Mary's and mine continuing search for adventure on Mondays, we went to the Toyota Motor Company for a tour. After all one can not move to Japan and live in Toyota and not visit the place that Toyotas come from. And let me tell you getting there was no easy task. First, the company requires that you make a reservation two weeks in advance. So once the reservations were made we had to figure out how to get there. I knew we had to take a bus, but finding out which bus is easier said than done. First off they only leave for Toyota Motor about twice an hour. Second of all the info is all in Japanese. By the time we found the right bus, the one we needed had left and if we waited for the next one we would miss our tour. So we took a taxi. I had never taken a taxi until I came to Japan and I have taken more here than I ever imagined I would.

Well we got to the plant, on time, a little early in fact. So we used that time to wander around the showroom and "test drive" the cars. By test drive I mean sit in them and take pictures of ourselves.

Then it was time for the tour. They loaded us all onto a bus and drove us about 20 minutes away to the actual plant. They warned us that it wasn't air conditioned and they gave us little fans to cool off with. The first stop was the welding plant. It was the coolest thing ever. All of the welding is done by machines. It was like a mechanized ballet with sparks shooting into the air. All the welding machines made such precise movements. Here we learned that about 80% of the car is made by machines. But I think I would rather a machine be tightening the nuts and bolts on my car than some guy who may or may not be paying attention to what he is doing at the moment.

And the cars on the conveyer belt weren't even all the same. It would be a Corolla then a Prius, then a Camry. So the robots would have to adjust were they welded depending on the model. We weren't allowed to take pictures and at this point I was still obeying the rules. Sorry.

Then it was back on the bus to another section of the plant were they put the outer body on the car and make it look like a car. This was pretty cool too.

Then back on the bus to return to the start of our tour at the showroom. Mary and I decided to do a little souvenir shopping. Daddy I got you the Toyota you wanted. Although it may not be as big as you had hoped.

And a stop for lunch and an attempt at finding the bus to take us back to the city, but it failed, so we were forced to take a taxi again. This trip was supposed to be cheap since the factory was free, but we found other ways of spending money.