My apartment: Part 1

Since I haven't made a Blog post in a couple weeks, and golden week is long gone, I thought I'd do a few posts about my daily life in japan, starting with my apartment!

From the outside our apartment is fairly typical: The exposed concrete stairs, the tiny elevator shaft, the bike parking port. Like most japanese buildings of this size and purpose, the outside is primarily raw concrete and tiny tiles. What made this effect so popular in japan? I probably will never know. (Actually I'll probably look that up when I'm at school next year with access to a large architectural library)

Because bicycles are such a popular method of transportation in Japan ( I estimate the bike population of Japan to be something like twice the human population, and I'm being conservative here to avoid sounding like I did no actual math)
Every apartment building ha some sort of bicycle parking. Ours is very simply a roof to keep the rain off. The thing is always full of bike, but you can tell that only a handful are ever used because most of them are covered in the brown dust that floats over from China.

Going up the little elevator you reach our landing at the third floor:

Our hallway is directly exposed to the elements if the door is left open. It's usually stifling hot if its left closed.

Entering my actual room , it looks much like any Japanese Room. There is a little area for me to take off my shoes, next to my laundry and garbage. 

 I have a nice little japanese washing maching. Its maximum capacity is pretty small, but I suits the amount of laundry I need to do.

The catch with Japanese laundry machines is that they don't use hot water. At least mine doesn't. When I do whites I usually fill the thing up manually with buckets of hot water which,  thankfully, is extremely hot in Japan.

More over, the washer has a really loud and violent rinse and drain cycle. This usually involves knocking over my brooms and umbrella.

You can see my collection of plastic bottles and milk cartons in the bottom right.

My bath room is again, fairly typical. A small plastic walled room, separate from the toilet, and raised further above the rest of my floor. The tub is pretty small, but very deep, and the shower is  naturally much too short for me to stand under it. I have a small mirrored cabinet above my little sink to store my things. The funny thing is, I can remember now when this was all very small, but after living here for three months it feels quite natural.

The kitchen area is pretty minimal. A tiny sink that I can barely fit my pans into, and a small electric element sit below a little storage shelf. The counter is about up to below my crotch, so I usually kneel when I do dishes.

My little appliance corner. Along with the ubiquitous fridge and microwave/ oven combo, I also a have a rice cooker (most useful kitchen appliance since the electric stove) and an insulated electric kettle. I was luckily enough to land a toaster when I came here, and  in spite of the relative strangeness of Japanese bread, it has served me well.

To round the team out, a broken VCR to add some height to the microwave and cut my back 4 inches of slack. Lord knows the ball height kitchen counter isn't doing anything for me.

Toyota Commemorative Musuem of Technology

 

Since Nagoya is rich with cool museums, and this Saturday was rainy, James and I decided to go take a look at The Toyota Commemorative Museum of Technology.  The Museum is divided overall into two segments, exploring the history of the original Toyota Automated Loom Corporation, and its eventual subsidiary companies after it diversified its industries into Car Manufacturing, Electronic.

There are over ten companies in the Toyota Group, And only one or two of them have anything to do with cars. This is standard accoording to the "Zaibatsu" system, around which many Major Japanese corporations (All Japanese Corporations?) are arranged. In this system many large companies from diverse sectors provide mutual support to the group members. These companies are usually descended from a parent Corporation (e.g. Mitsubishi) or have been acquired by a larger group.

The point is, Toyota does a lot more than cars, and because of its early history as a loom builder, and then automobile manufacturer, it produces everything from textiles, to modern automated looms, to of course, cars. This allows the group to be very independent of other manufacturers. For example, Aichi Steel Corporation, originaly Toyota Steel Works, a subsidiary of  Toyoda Automatic Loom Manufacturer, likely produces the steel used in many Toyota cars manufactured in Japan. Toyota also produces the textiles it later uses in its seat belts under the name of a separate company in the Toyota group, which was in fact the original parent company of the Toyota group.

Anyways the result of all this history lesson in Toyota's history, is that the museum they have set up is an awesome showcase of the history of both weaving technology and automobile manufacturing in Japan

  

To begin, here is one of the older automated looms on display in the museum. Many of the looms actually work, and the employees demonstrate them every few minutes. This particular model was based on a french design, powered by a waterwheel. The interesting thing about toyota, and likely many Japanese corporations, is how they took the models of cars and looms made in Europe, used them to start up their own companies, and then improved upon them in the decades after, to become world leaders in the same technology. 

Its a promising story of how much any people or nation can achieve from humble beginnings, if given the chance.

  But enough wishy-washy philosophy! God knows America's not going give any mostly rural countries the chance to do that again! Better to just bomb them and take their resources and be done with it!

On to Robots! TRUMPET PLAYING ROBOTS! This guy here isn't the actual model you might have seen on the news or in documentaries. But it is a prototype of the one that actually walks around and plays the trumpet- With its lips!

 The musuem is amazingly demostrative, all of the looms they have, including the older ones are fully operational, and they demonstrate them regularly. This is a demonstration of the forging process used to produce car parts.

 Moving on to the car part of the museum!

The Museum has a large pavilion where you can see display models of Some of Toyota's most iconic cars through its history. Two of my favorites were the original American inspired Toyota Passenger car, and the first Corolla, with all its late fifties classiness.

The Majority of this part of the museum, however, is dedicated to displaying the manufacturing processes that Toyota used when first making its cars in the 1930's up until modern processes which ar heavily automated. There are simulations of robotic part fitting, forging, and machining. And when I say simulations, I mean that the actual machines are there working in front of you, they just don't produce anything!

Here is the rig used to automatically assemble and weld the frame of one passenger car.

James standing under a 120 tonne forging press from chicago Or maybe it was a 6500 tonne press. In any case it was about four stories of practically solid steel.

It wouldn't be a good museum dedicated to a currently operating company if there wasn't sometime of modern marketing included on the display floor. A sudden departure from the rest of the collection of cars on display, whose models seem to span up until the late 80's, there was a display of a a cut away Plug in Hybrid Prius.

 

As we were leaving the museum at closing time and the rain was coming down, we checked out one last piece on display. A large steam powered wheel, which would have run the looms when the factory was first being built. A nice way to end the trip through the museum, which does a really good job of presenting the history of the Toyota company, through interactive and authentic displays of the company's machines in technology.

Aside from the fun of seeing so many industrial machines in action, the museum is an inspiring reminder of the things humans can accomplish.  Automated Looms were some of the first automated technology humanity ever produced. To see the progression in a few hundred years of those at once simple and fascinatingly complex steam powered machines to their modern equivalents, is an inspiring reminder of what humans are capable of. As much as we lament on the human condition, and the dire situation we find ourselves in, it is impossible to forget, when confronted with the brief history of our technological advancement, the genius of which we are capable. Men throughout history have dreamed up ways to make our lives easier and more comfortable, life less full of hardship. And they have succeeded again and again. Thinking about this inspires me not to look back on our terrible mistakes,  but to look to the future with the hope that there are clever people who will wholeheartedly work towards the resolution of our problems.

Golden Week: Kyoto

 

I'll admit this post is being published almost a month after I got back from golden week, but I couldn't leave out the last leg of our journey, Kyoto! We arrived in the evening quite late, and found our hostel, the khaosan guest house: a very clean and modern youth hostel, if a little expensive. After a really proper night out on the town in Gion, (so awesome I don't have any pictures), we set out early in the morning.

The weather, like most of the week was gorgeous, we couldn't ask for anything better! 
We first headed to the Fushimi Inari Shrine, which is probably one of the coolest places you can go in Kyoto.

The shrine it self isn't too special, but behind the shrine, winding its way up the mountain side, is a trail, along which are build thousands of red tori-gates.  You can spend hours walking up the trail to the small shrine atop the mountain, most of the time underneath the wooden cross pieces of the gates, with the peaceful green forest peeking through the finger width cracks between each individual gate.

The Shrine Maidens make their rounds in their standard shockingly orange robes.

We met up with the girls a few minutes up the shrine, stumbling into eachother as they came down from their aborted attempt at walking up the whole trail. In Olivia's words "It's just more gates". We didn't end up hiking the whole way that time, but I can hardly imagine a more unique, if homogenous, hiking trail.

 

After leaving the shrine, we biked over to the venue for a horse-archery tournament.

It took a while for the thing to get started, mostly the three archers pacing back and forth along the pitch on horse back. Some people in Kimono dressed up like edo period aristocrats  paraded along with them for a while, and then the action started.

Our view wasn't very good because of the packed venue, but I managed to get a few rapid shots of the actual bowmanship. The thing is, It's over so quickly, that you can hardly see if with your eyes. The rider gallops full throttle towards the target, which takes very little time; you see a flash of color, and then you hear the crack of wood breaking. A few pieces fly through the air, and then the rider slows to a canter and doubles back to his starting place.

 

Our last stop in Kyoto was the famous golden temple. True to its name, the temple's top two stories are entirely coated in real gold leaf.  We only managed to see it in the overcast weather that afternoon, but it was still a pretty spectacular sight!

 

 Because we loved Osaka so much, we spent very little actual time in Kyoto. But it is definitely an interesting city to visit, a far cry from the dense urban centres of Tokyo and Nagoya that we are used to. Every where you go there are older buildings, the city is far less built up, and preserves a lot more green space. Not to mention the fact that the streets in Kyoto are more like North-American streets, running primarily along compass axises.

Kyoto brings to an end a wonderful week of exploring Japan, with some of the best weather I've seen in my life. I hope I get to see alot more of Japan in my remaining months here, but even six months is too short to really explore all that Japan has to offer, Its a country with so many interesting places, and Golden Week has only given me the taste to see more!