Nagoya -- Toyota Museum

We went to Nagoya (36 min by bullet train from Kyoto) yesterday and visited the Toyota museum. It is very educational as we could see the assembly line, learn about the history of Toyota, see demostrations on how wool and cotton is made into threads etc. Of course, we didn't forget to fool around. It's so funny seeing how Nana tries to be a g*ost. Please just look at the video below.

Nana and her g*ostly act

Alright, back to the topic. Do you know that Toyota started as a textile manufacturer? Its founder Sakichi Toyoda improved on spinning looms and other textile machines that launched the Industrial Revolution. His son, Kiichiro later created a new division into automobile business, producing its 1st passenger car in Japan in 1936 (see below).

Toyota Standard Sedan Model AA

In 1920s, the son's venture into automobile were actually widely disaaproved by fellow Japanese because at that time America was already quite advanced in automobile industry. Despite this, Toyota managed to gain a strong footing in the industry after WW2.

the wooden body is built

then worker hammers cut out steel plates into panels (like outer cast for the car).

it is fixed onto the car. See out the surface shines when there is not a single dented part left?

this is the steel body replacing the wooden ones at later times.

how the car will look like when completed. It must be sooooo expensive because every part of it is single handedly made.

We also saw the development of instrument clusters including the speedometers. You can see how the change of design help enhance readability as the years pass by.

see the video....

speedometers from the past till 90s

this is Sakichi Toyoda, the founder. You might wonder why it is called Toyota instead of Toyoda. Toyota (トヨタ) is considered luckier than Toyoda (豊田) in Japan because it takes only 8 strokes to write in Katakana, and '8' is considered lucky in Japan.

This spinning loom is placed in the main lobby hall because it is Toyota's textile business initially. Btw, Toyota stills continues its textile industry until now.

At that time when cotton business was a boom.

cotton plant (American cotton)

harvesting cotton

Below is a video on how cotton is made into yarn using the one of the earliest manual method.

Later spinning wheels came into the picture. Actually from the 14th century there were already spinning wheels in Europe. Even India's Charka spinning wheels were recognised. Japan learnt about spinning wheels from China and Toyoda enhanced the hand operated equipment to automatic ones. See, you can copy, improvised and out will pop out a better work.

Then another video on how to make the cotton soft and fluffy. It feels good watching this.

see how they 'diak' the string to make fluffy cotton?

Toyoda improved hand operated looms after watching his mother taking so much time to make cloth. He invented looms after looms, minimizing time and effort. Later, automatic looms were developed and now it is fully computerized.

More than 1 ball of cotton can be pulled into yarns at the same time (multiple spinning loom).

the cotton strings being rolled up.

the whole picture. This is hand-operated by rotating the circular thing on the right.

a hand loom (for making cloth)

the strings used to make cloth. Vertical strings are laid out while each horizontal string runs across from left to right. (a better machine operated loom)