5/19 Toyota Plant Tour

Today we went on about a 100 trains to get to Toyota City for a tour of the plant... Ok so not really 100 but 4 trains to get there and 4 to get back. It really is crazy how you can get anywhere by train though... Anyway the plant tour was pretty cool. I liked the Toyota museum as well. They also displayed future Toyota products at the museum which were crazy to see. There was a robot there that played the trumpet too... Completely flawlessly. After seeing the robot play the trumpet flawlessly then the robots build cars (which was insane to watch) I started thinking of Terminator. I just wonder when these robots will become self-aware, then we're in trouble.

After the plant tour Ryan said that his feet were hurting him and his shoes felt too tight. He wanted to stop in Kyoto and get some new shoes. So when we finally got to Kyoto station Ryan, Annalise and I headed for the covered mall area on Sanjo street. This was an experience because it was the first time we had taken the train or subway by ourselves without any instruction! We were getting around Japan all on our own. We walked around the mall area for over an hour and went to about 10 shoe stores... none of which carried anything above a size 10! Don't try to buy shoes in Japan because they have super small feet! So Ryan was out of luck!

We got dinner at a restaurant on Sanjo street and it was very delicious. We had a great time and sat in the restaurant for over an hour just talking and hanging out. We left and started our quest to get back to Otsu. We ran into another white guy who could see we were a little lost. He was really cool and talked to us on the train. He was from New York and is now a Shinto Buddhist. His wife was with him, who he had met in Japan and she spoke a little English. He pointed us in the right direction to get back!

On the last train we were on we ran into a group of Japanese girls that all had basketball bags. We started talking to them and they were so excited to talk to us! It was so much fun. They would use a little bit of english and ask us questions and I would use a little japanese and ask them questions or translate things! They were hilarious and just so excited to talk to us. It was a great night and we made it back all on our own!