After getting up in the morning, making sure I was all packed up since we would be leaving for a different hotel that night, and eating breakfast, it was time to head to Mazda for our next business visit. When we first arrived at Mazda, we were able to look around their lobby and at some of their new cars. We also found out we would be taking the tour (since it was a public tour) with students from another university and also with a a man and his wife and son. Once the bus had arrived to take us to the museum and factory, we all boarded and left. While driving, the tour guide informed us that we would be allowed to take pictures in the museum, but not on the bus or in the factory itself.
Mazda's museum was not overly impressive for me personally. It basically just kind of showed the different cars Mazda had made over the years and the innovations that have tried to make with each new release of their cars. However, I really enjoyed the factory. We walked on a catwalk overlooking the end-process of the factory line. I will admit to not have an overly large amount of knowledge when it comes to this process, but I walked with Ryan who works in the factories for GM, so he was able to give me a lot of insight as to what was going on at each station. What I really enjoyed though was when we would hit sections of the factory would Ryan would know what the workers were doing, but he was surprised by the process because of how different it was from what he was used to. Following the factory we were led back into the museum. At least in this part we got to see some of their concept cars, which were actually pretty cool and rather interesting. The final part of the Mazda tour had us watch a short video presentation and then ride bus back to the main office where we started.
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| Mazda's concept car |
After arriving back at the train station and eating lunch, we set off for our next destination of the Itsukushima Shrine. The shrine itself is actually quite interesting. The main attraction to the shrine is the floating gate in the water outside the shrine. The gate is extremely old and it was definitely a very impressive structure. We were all given free time to explore the shine and the surrounding area. Most of us walked out to the shrine in order to get closer pictures and to just inspect it closer. We were able to do this thanks to the low tide. Walking around the shrine itself was actually pretty quick. It reminded me a lot of the other Shinto shrines we saw when we visited the Shinto Shrines and Buddhist Temples in Kamakura. I still really liked the architecture of the entire place, but the gate was by far one of the most interesting pieces there. However, we were on a time crunch to make our next bullet train for Osaka (where we would be spending the night), so we had to make sure we made the ferry back to the mainland in order to catch all our trains. While today did include a lot of walking, it was nice to have the rest of the time be a bit more relaxed. Especially since we all knew that the next day was going to be a very busy day.
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| The gate at Itsukushima Shrine |
After getting up in the morning, making sure I was all packed up since we would be leaving for a different hotel that night, and eating breakfast, it was time to head to Mazda for our next business visit. When we first arrived at Mazda, we were able to look around their lobby and at some of their new cars. We also found out we would be taking the tour (since it was a public tour) with students from another university and also with a a man and his wife and son. Once the bus had arrived to take us to the museum and factory, we all boarded and left. While driving, the tour guide informed us that we would be allowed to take pictures in the museum, but not on the bus or in the factory itself.
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