Category Archives: Toride City

City Life, Toride City

The Canon Company Visit

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Visiting the Canon factory was one of the highest points of our Toride city visit. Canon Inc. is a Japanese multinational corporation that specializes in imaging and optical products. This includes cameras, photocopiers and computer printers. This company’s products are located in over 200 countries, with about 115 thousand employees worldwide. The Canon factory in Toride works using the philosophy of “Kyosei”, which means living and working together for the common good. It believes in promoting measures to reduce environmental concerns that are present worldwide. They make these creative mottos to produce a more productive working environment. Not one second is wasted, but instead calculated accordingly for better productivity.

The general manager of the Toride plant gave us a brief introduction of the factory. He told us Canon takes an active role in a wide range of environmental friendly activities including development and production operations, emphasizing the separation, and processing of waste materials and recycling.

The concept of the “Meister system” was introduced to our tour group. A “Meister” is a highly trained worker that knows all the ins and outs of a certain machine. One step above the “Meister” is the “Super Meister”, who can assemble a copy machine, containing over 600 pieces, by himself, in about ten hours. This system is a complimentary program, which gives employees an incentive to work harder, to achieve such a level. This type of rewarding system allows the employees to feel innovative and gives them the desire to work more efficiently.

With over 6500 employees, Toride’s Canon factory shows responsibility and sustainability, in a healthy environment. It has been told to us that most of the employees work in their company until the retirement age. The company is not only interested in the satisfaction of customers, but also the well being of their employees. They are continuously cooperating for the development of the city and the community.

(David Leipnitz, Brazil)

City Life, Our participants, Toride City

Toride City, Japan – Starting in Session Two



When mentally preparing for the trip to Japan, my excitement for what was ahead was all I thought about. It wasn’t until I was on the plane that I started to think about how many participants from session one would stay through the 2nd session, and how many of us newly hatched eggs there would be.

As people often do, I expected that many people thought like me and therefore had an expectation that many would be doing the same thing: applying only for session two.

So I was quite surprised to find out that there were only four of us that arrived on the 17th (two more joined us later). This meant that I and the three others would face a close knitted group that had already spent the past month together. In many ways this turned out to be true but I was surprised to see how good everyone was at “opening the circle” and letting the new people in. On my first day, a few people came right up to me and introduced themselves and asked questions about my flight and jokingly gave little inside facts about each other.

“She is really good at Japanese…” “And that guy, he can be a real goofball…”

The long days and tight schedule also helped bind us together. Right from the beginning we experienced so many things together. A lack of conversation was never a problem.

Within a few days I had a good sense of belonging and saw the group as a whole without distinguishing between the “new” and “old” members. It has taken longer to get to know some people but I don’t think it has anything to do with “new” and “old” participants but more with individual personalities.

(Signe Tinngaard Olesen, Denmark)

City Life, Toride City

Toride City, Ibaraki

Toride was a quiet rural village until it was developed in the 1960’s as a bedroom suburb of Tokyo. People who worked in the capital started to move to Toride for its rich nature and good access to the center of Tokyo.

Starting in 1995, the city began to lose inhabitants due to an aging population as well as the trend for young people to move back to the Tokyo city center.

A group of local people got together to revitalize Toride. Places for people to come together were built; such as the old-fashioned candy store “Yoiko (good kid)” and the community art gallery “Emaru”. Since a campus of Tokyo University of Arts is located in the city, there have been many events arranged to connect young students and local people. Those people who stood up for the city include Ms. Kudo from Yoiko and Mr. Sobajima, who stayed in the city after studying art to keep doing more projects.

We were fortunate to collaborate with them during our visit. Mr. Sobajima, together with other members of the local organizing committee, set up an event called “World Street”. A day prior to the event, each participant drew 3 small flags; the national flag of their native country, one with how to say ‘thank you’ in their mother tongue, and one with something famous from the place where they’re from, to be used in a game with local elementary school children.

For the international event, 60 kids came to get involved and learn about different cultures. Children in Toride don’t have the opportunity to communicate with foreign visitors so often and so they were a bit hesitant to talk to us in the beginning, but after spending some time, connected really well. Passer-bys stopped for a while to take a look at what they were doing, and the otherwise lonely street was livened up once again.

Some of the participants also leaned “Tamasudare (traditional bamboo stick performance)” at “Hohoemi San”. We teamed up with special needs “Tamasudare” performers who incidentally have became so popular in the region, that they visit elderly homes and schools on a regular basis. We enjoyed the opportunity to perform together, fully dressed in Japanese street-performer costume!