Nagoya Week-end, Translation part 2

After some more delay, here is the english translation of my week-end at Nagoya... part 2. Take note that this has nothing to do with whatever I did THIS week-end. It's all about 2 weeks ago :

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So, second part of my Week-end at Nagoya. After the Karaoke Friday and the following zombie Saturday, I was able to spend an agreable evening with Felix and his girlfriend. We talked about various subjects in a small Izakaya (a type of japanese bar really pleasant). This time I made sure to come back around 23h ! On Sunday, both of my friend being busy, I took this time to visit a few places in Nagoya. I had already seen many interesting places when I visited last September; Nagoya Castle, Atsuta Shrine, Sakae (the main shopping district, etc. However, I wanted to revisit the shrine and I had heard at the Hotel that the Toyota Museum was very interesting due to it having lots of interactive stuff.

Atsuta Shrine did not change much since my last visit. But luck was on my side, instead of a boring revisit I stumble upon a group of craftsmen while they were making a Katana in the most traditionnal way. It is very impressive, especially the time required to produce such a thing. They put a piece a metal in the furnace for 5min or more (provided the piece of metal was already quite red) than three people hit on it with fairly big hammer for the better part of 10 seconds and then one man immediately put the metal back in the furnace for another 5min. This goes on until the metal starts ressembling something, at which point they fold the piece of metal on itself and restart the whole process. All this at least 20 times. But beside seeing the greatness of Katana making first hand, I was also able to hold the not-yet-finished thing in my small untrained hands ! I believe that was a very lucky day for me !

The Toyota museum was also very interesting. I didn't know Toyota had begun as a textile manufacturer ! In each of the exibition room there is hundred of fully functionnal machine that you can admire and discovert throughout history. From the manual working machine operated by one of the museum employee to the high-tech piece of industrial robot that you can activate by the push of a single button, everything was there and working ! After the textile you can see the first metal reasearch and fabrication building of Toyota and the last room features everything Toyota stands for nowadays ! You can even amuse yourself by starting the 600 tons press in the middle of the showroom ! There was also sliced view of Toyota most famous engines that turns at slow speed so you can understand how they work. For 500 yen to get inside the museum it was extremely worth it. It was also, if I'm not mistaken, the first real museum I have been to since I came to Japan.

But the last, and not the least, part of the week-end was without contest the return trip ! I had decided to go ahead with the foolish expense and do the whole trip in Shinkansen. Might not look like it, but that's 100$ each way ! It's worth it tough, the Shinkansen is probably the most confortable and fast way of transportation in Japan. To give you an idea, had I taken the bus, the trip would have taken 6 hours, it took a little less than 2h in Shinkansen ! Japan Railway (the company mostly responsible for the Shinkansen and other railways in Japan) is also world famous for its precision. Trains operated by JR have a yearly average lag time of 12 seconds !

So, I was supose to take the last Shinkansen from Nagoya, Sunday at 22h10, arriving at Tokyo central station at 23h45, a good half-hour before the last local train that would bring me back to my apartment. When I boarded the train, I was surprise to read on the panel outside that the train would be delayed 5min. Then 10min. Then 15min. Then after a while only "delayed" was writen on the board. I'm not absolutly certain of the reason for the lag has my japanese wasn't good enough to understand all the explanations from the train operator. (amongst the numerous excuse and boring stuff I did catch the word "police"). As it turn out, later I found out in the news that the delay was probably caused by some poor JR employee who decided to stop the train with it's bare hand. Attemps which obviously failed. Anyway, all this to say that I got to Tokyo around 2am instead of the 23h45 I was supposed to. Quite a bit too late for me to catch my last train to my apartment. Of course, I could have taken a taxi to get home. However, you have to consider that there was a few hundred people in the Shinkansen with me and that 99% of them had the same tough. Beside, taxis in Japan are way to costly. So after some deliberations, I decided to walk home, which took me another 1h45min. Hopefully, I have flexible work hours so I was able to get to work around 11h and get a good night of sleep anyway !

You can check out the photos two post bellow or look on my flickr page if you're a friend of mine !