Toyota Commemorative Museum

First I'm a little pissed off because just when I started to write in english, I began to receive spam-comments in the blog. Come on, these people have nothing more to do then just annoy us? I wonder if someone actually click on the links.

Anyway, I'm sort of disappointed now because I needed a friend, and couldn't find him. Its very easy here to get someone in your mobile's address book, but to find real friends is a big challenge. I have to get used to it, it seems that even friendship are different here. Benkyou ni naru na...

I'm not in the mood to write philosophy of feelings today, so I'll remember a nice event that happened last month. In another japanese-class trip, we went to the Toyota Commemorative Museum. Everybody knows that Toyota is a big japanese group that mainly makes cars. But I found that its not just that.

Toyota began its plan to take on the world with a innocent weaving factory. Always with top notch technology, they then changed to the automobile sector, and who knows what will come next.

Yuu san, Iwatsu sensei and Kyo san came with me. The big thing is one of the weaving machines, the museum's simbol.

In the beggining I didn't wanted to go to the museum, it looked kinda boring in the flyer we read some time ago. But its better then nothing. Because I like to do different things, I went there with a smile on my face.

Some interactive machines give more fun to the children. Or they are the only thing that resemble fun here.

Basically we saw many machines capable of transforming raw cotton in thin threads, and then make fabrics with them. Japanese guides explained the workings, but the language was still very difficult for me to understand. Ganbatte ne.

One big cotton cloud splitting through the many pipes.

The cool thing about this part of the museum is that while some of the machines are human operated, others are just like the production lines of the industrial revolution: long strips of machines where the raw materials are inserted, and the final product pops out in the end. Very Acme style.

Enough of this clothing stuff, let's move to the next stage. Entering on the Automobile section, we suddenly found ourselves in a dark corridor with glass walls. On the ground, some screens showed technologic stuff like matrix. Mirrors reinforced the illusion. Very cool indeed. But It's difficult to explain in words, so behold the picture!

What do you expect? It's a mobile phone's picture in a dark place without flash ;)

Toyota is proud of itself because it built one of the first high class japanese cars (which in my opinion looks exactly like the foreign cars of the time). Of course the best comes last, so we began analysing individual parts and materials.

This is a digital microscope, gazing an iron structure.

It's SO cool to play in a steel xylophone. Ok, not that much.

Iron, Steel and aluminum malleability test. Twist and shout.

Of course I took many more pictures of the many more things there, but I would go crazy if I tried to put all here. Well lets jump to the car production process!

In the primordium of the japanese (and maybe the rest of the world's) automotive construction, the cars were hand-made with shapes of wood, many hammer hits and a good amount of sweat.

The process was explained with videos and dummy dummies.

And that is the final product. Sugoi!

It should cost a lot too. Nothing special to me. Maybe I'm not a need for speed otaku.

Now THAT'S what I call nice vehicle.

Its the new toyota's personal locomotion system. Or sort like it. Its a shame that it wasn't working, just being exposed. Also, some car parts where shown in detail, with moving parts and information computers.

This rocket is actually an automatic shift system.

Did you like this so far? This was nothing, just old and new common stuff. The best thing about the museum was the amusement technology park. In short words, a place to play with nice gadgets.

This makes you feel like Pinky or some other stupid mouse.

The chairs simulate hydraulic suspension systems.

Air tunnel! Not mescaline enough to make you fly, but still fun. Look at the hentai teacher's gaze at Yuu's breasts ;)

A kind of maze. The directions were spoken by the helmet, but no vision augmentation effects :/

I felt almost like a power ranger with the apparatus.

Floating shock car. Boring!

Its always cool to see female struggling to see who's stronger.

Weight pendulum. Funny? Boring? Interesting? Wakaranai.

Enough playing! I gotta have some food or I'll die here, and the press will say that I died for staying 59 hours in front of the computer.