Nagoya Castle

Alright kids, time for a little history lesson. This past weekend, I went to visit Nagoya Castle, one of the most important historical structures in Japan. It was pretty awesome so naturally I wanted to learn more about it.

The building of the castle was initiated by the first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, Ieyasu Tokugawa, claimed by BBC to be “one of the most significant figures in Japanese history” and if BBC says it, it has to be true, right? Though this portrait of him makes him more like a delicately dressed poet, he had the good sense to build a gigantic castle to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 and to help protect his shogunate from some newly formed enemies. Construction began in 1610 and was completed in 1615.

Ieysu Tokugawa - picture from wikipedia.org

The castle “flourished” under Tokugawa Yoshinao, Tokugawa Ieyasu's ninth son, the leader of the Owari Tokugawa clan.  By the time Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the fifteenth and final Tokugawa shogun, came to power, the family had shifted residence to Edo Castle, in what is now Tokyo.  After the Meiji Restoration in 1868 - the period when the feudal shoguns were dismantled as Emperor Meiji centralized Japanese power to modernize Japan cultural, politically, and economically - the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Not likely to be forgotten however, Nagoya Castle became the first castle to become a national treasure in 1930. 

Painting of Nagoya Castle - 1930
picture from barewalls.com

Nagoya Castle - up close and personal!

 

  

During World War II, the main castle tower and the palace were destroyed by air raids. Because there were a large amount of photographs and written records of the building, the main castle tower was hastily rebuilt in 1959. Fifty years later, the reconstruction of Hommaru Palace began in 2009 as part of Nagoya city's 400th anniversary celebration. The entrance hall and the main hall were reopened in May of last year and the remaining constructions are to be completed by 2018. The poster below shows what the completed palace will look like.

NC 400 (Nagoya City - 400 years) poster
from hommaru-palace.city.nagoya.jp

Hommaru Palace Entrance Hall

The main hall of Hommaru Palace is decorated in gilded sliding doors with frolicking leopards and cheetahs and beautiful landscapes painted in the foreground that were very, very cool. Most of these removable panels were saved during the fire that burned down the castle and carefully restored to be placed in the reconstructed castle. A few of the pictures I took are shown below, though the Nagoya city webpage has a few better quality full prints.

                 

The prized possession of Hommaru castle however has to be the Kinshachi, imaginary animals, much like akin to magical killer dolphins, that were constructed to show off the wealth of the family. A pair of these animals sit on the top corners of the castle. On the north side is a male weighing 44.69 kg in 18 karat gold, on the south side is a female weighing 43.39 kg in 18 karat gold. There is also a less expensive mock-up on the first floor of the castle museum that is still very beautiful in it's own right. :)

Other highlights from the museum are shown below. 

    

A little palanquin for a little shogun!

A library fit for a shogun, though I wouldn't mind one myself!

And of course the view from the top of the castle was pretty neato.

Japanese Word of the Day - ANZEN

If there is one thing that Japan is really good at, it is safety, in it's all-encompassing gory glory; personal safety, health and wellness, workplace safety, environmental awareness. It's not that there is no crime nor accidents here but they certainly take a lot of precautions to mitigate the potential.

I was given a two hour introduction to safety at Toyota last week. Pretty interesting stuff. First there was a class on pedestrian and driving safety. When walking around the office besides staying on the walkways and pointing at intersections, there is even a motion-activated voice recording that reminds us to hold the handrails when walking up and down the stairs. I've also been informed that I am to partake in a four hour long computer training class detailing good ergonomic practices - which is probably very useful considering the long hours they work here!

Driving safety covered some basic rules that were slightly different from American roads. There were two really interesting lessons I got from the class: first, if you get into a car accident in Japan, your company gets notified, and there is a process of investigating the incident and finding countermeasures to make sure it doesn't happen again. The other one was pretty simple, Toyota's zero-tolerance policy for drunk driving. If you get caught, you get fired. 'Nuff said.

Safety in the plant is rather similar to back home, except that we have to wear these goofy looking hats or helmets along with our company jackets and safety shoes, and safety glasses are not required, so you can actually see what's going on around you! 

There was also a series of rather grotesque safety simulations showing what happens to fingers, arms, and other body parts if caught in different machines in the plant. They were all based on accidents that have occurred before which was the rather unnerving part. I don't think I'll ever look at a bamboo stick in quite the same way. 


Lastly, but just as importantly, there was a lengthy presentation on environmental awareness outlining the major initiatives that the company is taken to reduce waste and emissions, and the little things that we can do individually. Japan has an incredibly strict and comprehensive policy on recycling. I think there are 8 different waste containers in our break room separating PET bottles, PET bottle caps, aluminum cans, cardboard, paper, combustibles, there is even a specific container for juice boxes! I doubt that I will be able to stand not having recycling when I get back to Indiana.

Closing note: I found this pretty concise op-ed about recycling in Japan when I was looking for more information on the sorting process for waste. Linked above if you're at all interested in reading.

Up in the Air!

 

My Japan Airlines flight from Chicago to Narita had a partnership with the UN Biodiversity Coalition which was a good start to the trip, in my opinion. After sending many final text messages stateside I boarded the plane to my new home.

The gentleman sharing a row with me was quintessentially Japanese. I could have snapped a creeper picture while he was napping, but that would have been, well...quite creepy. So instead, close your eyes and I'll try and paint an image with my words. Well, you'll have to keep them open if you have to read at the same time, but see if you can pay someone to read it out loud for you. 

He was middle-aged, of medium build, not yet balding, but with a few gray hairs to his name. He wore thin rimmed glasses and clothes that were nice yet pragmatically comfortable for the 13 hour plane ride ahead of us. By the time I had taken my seat, he had already taken off his loafers to sneak into a pair of comfy slippers. He was soft-spoken and courteous, a very classy gentleman.  

Oh and he wasn't shy about pulling down his surgical mask to finish his first can of beer at 10.30 in the morning! :)

Disclaimer: These pictures were taken illegally. Well, they were taken after the stewardess had asked us to turn off all electronic devices, which probably warrants a stay in some sort of air flight purgatory. I couldn’t help it though, the view was so spectacular! But just so you know, in case your moral compass is more linear than mine, just close your eyes and scroll down or something.

Leaving Chicago

Arriving in Narita

I was relatively groggy and exhausted when I got to my room at Meitetsu but I felt oddly at home here. It's my little place of heaven for the next few weeks here I guess. My room on the 13th floor is just big enough to be very comfortable. If I didn't have so many things that I'm too emotionally attached to I think I could make a home right here.

  

Japanese Ingenuity! Sliding door between the bathroom and the shower.

And the view is pretty awesome!

Obligatory First Post

Alright, well this is going to get a bit gooey. I hadn't really considered keeping a blog to document my days here in Japan, but I soon realized that it's a great tool for communicating with many people at once, which is particularly useful when I am lucky enough to have people that I care about who live all over the globe. A few sentences, a few pictures, and suddenly I can keep everybody updated on my journey. It's the magic of the internet! I'm no Rudy Maxa (kudos to those of you who watched enough PBS to get that reference) but I will try to mix in a little bit of knowledge and little bit of wit and I'll be sure include lots of pictures for you visual learners and the ones with shorter attention spans.

A short introduction is in order, I suppose. I (Brown Bear, for those of you who aren't privy to nickname I picked up in college) will be living in Japan for approximately the next year working for Toyota Industries Corporation in Takahama, Aichi Prefecture. The biggest city in Aichi Prefecture is called Nagoya (see map below for visual reference). Besides learning all I can about battery powered forklifts, I hope to learn more about the language and culture of Japan, make some good friends, and eat some pretty good food, picking up a few LIFE tiles in the process.

So here goes. The more exciting bits and pieces of my life made public to all of you for some entertainment I hope -- the adventures of a brown bear in Japan. Please feel free to comment, voice concern, or ask questions; I promise I'll get back to you. :)

Happy Reading!