This was a thing in the Toyota museum. I don't know what it is but it's interesting.
Robot playing the trumpet. He was a bit of a ham.room, post dinner, pre shower - Rainy all day yesterday and today. :D I love rain.
Yesterday after my kanji class let out I walked purposefully to the main gate of campus where the students going on the Toyota field trip were meeting the bus. Toyota's headquarters is in Nagoya and I wanted to go just to see.
It was a bit of a bus ride over. But there were a lot of people I knew going and we all shared our lunches and talked and stuff. We arrived and first toured the assembly plant. We weren't allowed to bring our cameras inside (guess they were afraid we'd sell their design secrets to Honda or something. Although after the recent break fiasco I'm not sure their design secrets are in high demand...). Our tour guide was awesome. She told us it was her last day on the job! I didn't catch if she said why. She looked really young so I doubt it was retirement. Or who knows, in Japan there is still a strong impetus for women to work a few years before they are married or before they have kids but once they settle down to quit their jobs. Anyway I thought it was a shame because she was really into her job, you could tell.
All of the body shaping, large assembly, and welding is done by robots!! :o I was impressed. There were plenty of humans working on the more fine tune stuff though. At one point we walked by a sign that said "brake testing center". I turned to some of my friends and said, "This is it! Where it all went down!" We all had a few good laughs over the whole brakes malfunction thing. Hmmm, I wonder if it might have been in poor taste... is it too soon?
In the welding plant we got to watch the robotic arms do some welding from behind a think tinted glass wall. Afterwards we went to the museum they have. It has a bunch of futuristic stuff in it and a robot that plays trumpet (seriously). Cool stuff in there. Then it was time to head back. Our poor tour guide started tearing up when she was saying good-bye to us!! Poor thing. I say if you're gonna miss your job that badly, don't quit. But hey, I don't know her story maybe she had no choice.
Back at Nanzan I hurried home as fast as I could but it was still close to 7 by the time I got there. Enough time to eat, shower, do homework and crash from exhaustion. (but not enough to do a blog entry, sorry!)
On the way home a Japanese student saw me walking without an umbrella in the rain (light rain). If you've read some of the previous entries you know my take on umbrellas and rain but to reiterate I tend to be too lazy to bring out my umbrella if it isn't raining really hard. But this super, super nice girl saw me and came up and said she'd share with me!! I was so surprised and stammered a thank you. (I was too embarrassed to admit I HAD an umbrella with me in my bag but was being a lazy gaijin and not taking it out.) She asked where I was going and I said Nagoya Daigaku subway station and she was going there too! We talked all the way there. She said, "It's ok I forget my umbrella sometimes too." I was like, "O yeah, hehehehe." But she was so nice and smiled at me so big. This is the second time I have had such a warm encounter with a Japanese person I barely know. The first was Naoko san when she and I rubbed hands and when she hugged me. Now this girl had taken it upon herself to help a complete stranger, a foreign complete stranger, who had (seemingly) forgotten their umbrella. The kindness was just staggering for me. Maybe I haven't been looking in the right places but I haven't experience kindness like that very often in America. Americans we don't help each other as much as we could. We have a distinctive coldness to us that it took me coming to Japan to notice. Certainly not all Americans, but a great many. I would have to say I am guilty of it myself sometimes.
On the subway train this girl and I exchanged names (hers is Wakana), and I asked for her email address. Naoko san and Wakana san might be exceptional Japanese but I don't think so. Most every Japanese I've met and gotten to know is so genuinely kind. I don't mean friendly and cheerful (though they certainly are that as well) but they seem to truly care more. I think it's really cool.
Today was good. Class was late start today and otherwise proceeded as usual. It is always a little different on Thursdays during the morning commute though. For one I don't have Kai san with me (she and I come at different times on Thursday). Also the hour later puts me out of rush hour so the bus and trains are not stuffed and I can usually actually find a seat!
I had language class in the morning and we did intonation practice in the first lesson. Intonation is so hard. Pronunciation, easy. Intonation, insane. I got points off my most recent dialogue quiz for lousy intonation. >:( Ah well, I'll get it eventually I imagine.
In the afternoon was history of tea ceremony class, always good. The sensei always talks to me because he says I have to practice my Japanese! So sweet of him to take an interest in my development.
I am home now and will soon hop in the shower room and hopefully get to sleep soon after. I've been so tired lately. I get adequate rest at night. But my mind is never still "and the mind is what counts"* after all.
*quote from the play, "Death of a Salesman"
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