Oh what a feeling!

Last week, I was fortunate enough to be accepted to join 19 other JET participants on a tour and seminar program at Toyota's factory plants and head office. It was an amazing experience and it was great to get out of the office for a couple of days! The highlight was having a tour of the factory and watching the assembly of cars. It was good to consolidate some of the stuff I learned at uni. If you didn't know, Toyota's processing system is famous. I won't go into it though, because it would probably bore the pants off you. I was just excited to see something in action that I had read in textbooks, and see that it actually worked!
There were seven countries represented, and people from 16 prefectures in Japan. The main focus of the program was to understand the environmental developments made by Toyota to help the world. It was more or less about their hybrid cars. We had a couple of Q & A sessions, in which the management representatives had some tough questions to deal with. They were sweating in their seats!
The photo above is of the new hybrid car, "Prius". The TV screen in front of it moves across from left to right and showed the inside of the car, kind of like an X-ray. It was awesome.
This car looks sooo comfortable. I don't know what the name of it is, but I want one. The steering wheel looks nothing like a regular steering wheel. It looks like it belongs in a spaceship or something.
This is one of those robot machines that you see on TV programs or something. It rolls around without you making any major movements. Unfortunately, this one didn't move...
This is one of those robots that does fantastic things. It actually plays the trumpet! It's not a recording! It did get annoying though, because it only plays two songs...
These two pictures are of a person demonstrating that robot thing that I was sitting in before. It's really big, but nice and smooth.
You can even recline in it!
This is another robot. I didn't see it in action though, but it looked cool.
At the end of the two days, all participants were given the opportunity to test drive the Prius. I was soooo excited as I hadn't driven a car for 8 months and was busting to drive! This car is amazing. It makes absolutely no sound or vibration when you turn the ignition on as it is running on electricity. When you drive it fast the fuel charges the battery, but when you slow down, it only runs on the electricity. It has a great fuel economy of 36km/L! I wonder how much they cost..... If you want one in Australia, there's a 4 month waiting list.

Well that's it for now. This is a little late as I have done some other exciting things since. I went to Okinawa! I will try to put the gazillion photos up soon. Cya!