The workshop by the sea

Large cruise ships berth at Kinjo Pier, berths 80–81. It is a cargo and exhibition pier, not a resort quay. There is no cruise terminal building, and the berths sit inside a restricted area. Most smaller ships use Garden Pier No.3 instead, five minutes on foot from the subway.

The port opened to foreign trade in November 1907, when Atsuta port was renamed the Port of Nagoya. The city calls Garden Pier the birthplace of the port. Today it handles more cargo than any other port in Japan. A July 2024 request from the Nagoya Chamber of Commerce and Industry put 2023 at 157.84 million tonnes, the 22nd year in a row at the top.

A loom before a car

Sakichi Toyoda was born in 1867 in what is now Shizuoka Prefecture. In 1890 he made a wooden hand loom. In 1896 he made a power loom of wood and iron, which the Toyota museum calls Japan's first. In 1911 he set up an automatic weaving works in Sako, Nagoya, with a red-brick pilot plant to develop his looms.

In 1924 he completed the Type G automatic loom, which changed shuttles without stopping. In 1926 he founded Toyoda Jido Shoki Seisakusho, today Toyota Industries. In 1929 he transferred the Type G patent to Platt Brothers & Co. of the UK. He died on 30 October 1930.

In 1929 a Nagoya loom patent was sold to a British machine-maker.

His son Kiichiro Toyoda (1894–1951) took the family into cars. The museum records the founding of Toyota Motor Co. in 1937. It names two ideas from the two men: Kiichiro's devotion to monozukuri, the making of things, and the "spirit of being studious and creative" that Sakichi wrote in his invention journal.

The brick plant

The Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology opened in June 1994 in that 1911 brick plant, as a joint project of Toyota Group companies. The government listed the building as Heritage of Industrial Modernization in 2007. It has two halls: the Textile Machinery Pavilion and the Automobile Pavilion.

It is open 9:30–17:00, last admission 16:30, and closed on Mondays, so it is open on all three Jade calls. Adults pay ¥1,000. It is three minutes from Sako Station, one stop from Meitetsu Nagoya on local trains, or five minutes by taxi from Nagoya Station.

Beside the berth: trains

The SCMAGLEV and Railway Park is JR Central's museum on Kinjo Pier, two minutes on foot from Kinjo-futo Station. It opened on 14 March 2011. It shows 39 vehicles, maglev and conventional, some of which you can board. Three are set out as its symbols: the C62 17 steam locomotive, built in 1949; a 955-series Shinkansen test train; and the MLX01-1 superconducting maglev test car. The museum also has driving simulators and what it calls the largest diorama in Japan.

It is open 10:00–17:30, last entry 30 minutes before closing, and adults pay ¥1,200. It closes on Tuesdays. The 2026 calendar lists it closed on 4, 10, 17 and 24 November.

The rest of the pier

Kinjo Pier also has LEGOLAND Japan, the Port Messe exhibition halls and Maker's Pier, a shopping and dining centre four minutes from the station. Maker's Pier has free Wi-Fi and a Nagoya-meshi restaurant, Wami; shop hours vary. The Cruise Nagoya water bus links Kinjo and Garden Pier in 40 minutes for ¥1,200, but whether it runs on the November call days is not confirmed. At Garden Pier the Port Building and the icebreaker Fuji are closed until 30 November 2026; the aquarium is open.