I just realized why the intarwebs could be slow here. They have ¥500 video-on-demand and all the businessmen were probably watching pr0n as I tried to upload my pictures. I’m going to be up late again uploading all this again, I’m sure. I didn’t end up going to Nagoya Castle or to the shrine that seems to hold one of the three treasures of the Imperial Family. There’s lots more to see here than I saw.

The first place I went was the Toyota Museum. I got on the subway and bought a ¥600 all-day pass you can get on the weekends and started going the wrong way. I didn’t have much luck with the subways today. When I got off at the right station, the map set me off down in a direction that didn’t look museum-like.

The temple on the way was tiny, too.

I think I took this picture by accident, in front of the tiny temple.

The first thing you see in the Toyota museum is a huge circular loom. Toyota started out as a textile machinery company.

As you go in there are several cotton thread spinning demonstrations and the main loom Toyota designed and patented.

Then it goes into thread spinning throughout the ages and the display is huge.

There’s huge industrial machines for carding and spinning the thread.

The whole hall is huge. I swear I spent an hour looking at different shuttle technology for looms.

Some of the looms were huge.

This loom uses air instead of a shuttle to get the thread across. I didn’t take a picture of the loom that used water instead of a shuttle.

There whole factory is turned into a museum so there’s lots of space for the automobile museum as well. I didn’t spend as much time in the automobile museum because I’m familiar with lots of the automotive and metal working technology from high school.

I didn’t take pictures of the displays describing engines or gears or brakes or fuel injection or anything I already knew about.

There were kid areas as well and I took pictures of this set of gearboxes that you used to get the wheel connected to the kinetic ball machine.

The gears go on the floor between these two. This was in a side-building and there were even more kid attractions in the main building.

After that it was off to the MAGLEV and Railway Park at the end of a random train line.

The first room has dramatic lighting and has three trains, a locomotive and two maglev mock-ups. I was hoping this wasn’t the whole thing because the first room was just crap besides the locomotive.

Beyond the first room was another larger room full of real trains! Lots of models of bullet train as well as old trains. This is the original model Shinkansen and there’s a placard with the date so you can take a picture and remember when you were there (10/20/2012 for me).

Several styles of Shinkansen trains.

Older trains, a long-distance train on the left and a standard train on the right. The old model train would tilt and could go 80kph. The Shinkansen goes in the 200’s.

Some engines, some sleeper cars.

This is a special bullet train used to monitor track and wire conditions.

These are old long-distance trains.

Really old trains. I think the ED 11 2 is imported from England.

The looks similar to the Tokyo Chuo line trains.

I went out to the smoking lounge just to take a picture of the industrial wasteland that’s across the bay. I shouldn’t say wasteland; it’s probably just a steel or chemical plant.

And the bridge across the bay.

I had a bento at the train museum. They have the same bentos that they sell at the bullet train stations! I missed eating one on the way from Tokyo to Hamamatsu, so I got one today. It was even more awful when you eat it at 2PM at the train museum rather than noon on the train.

After the train museum I went back to Nagoya station and got back on the subway and got off at the wrong station again. I finally made it to Ōsu Kannon Temple. You can’t tell by this picture but the temple is busy. The building on the left is full off Buddhist statues of the Kannon or Goddess of Mercy. The building to the right is a library that houses ancient texts, including one about how the Japanese people came to be.

The side gate.

The main gate.

Right outside of the temple was a shop selling old Japanese treats. I missed a puppet show because I was buying and eating this.

This next picture is for Eric of a place I found while I was wandering around the area by Ōsu Kannon Temple.

This is a neighborhood shrine I saw.

A smaller shrine right next to the previous one.

This is the Hinode shrine. There were a bunch of guys sitting around drinking beers.

Turns out it was a festival and it was Nagoya day or something. I missed a parade at the station.

For dinner, I had tebasaki, or the famous Nagoya chicken wings. This is how I spent ¥4,240 ($53.47 USD). The flavoring was sweet and peppery and quite good.

I also had Tarzan-yaki.

I also had wing gyoza, where they split and stuffed the chicken wing with gyoza filling.

So that’s it. It took OVER FOUR HOURS to upload these pictures and I went to sleep instead of waiting on the upload. So sorry this is late!