Fujitrans visit

This week I was able to see Nagoya Port in all of its glory! I went on a tour of Fujitrans, a company which does domestic sea shipments.

First off, welcome to Fujitrans... what Japanese company would be complete without a life-sized wooden tiger in their lobby?! (Remember 2010 is Year of the Tiger!)

Here is an aerial view of Fujitrans property. The green swirly things are highways, so just ignore them. The tiny green arrow indicates the office, and I put a red box around part of their parking lot and drew arrows to show how the cars load onto the vessel docked at sea! Here's a pic of the Fujitrans vessel. It's huge like an aircraft carrier or cruise ship. Length is 167 meters, and width is 30 meters. This particular vessel holds 846 vehicles and 150 trailers.

As a rule of thumb, 1 hour by plane is equal to 1 day by sea. So it takes 90 minutes to fly to Tokyo, and it takes 36 hours on the vessel.

Inside the vessel, here is the radar screen... sure, it makes perfect sense to me.

So much sense that they elected me "Captain Kerri".

Here's the control area where they dock the vessel. There are windows on the floor to see how close the are. This particular ship does not need to be guided by tugboats (as you will see later). They can do everything on their own.

If you're still not sure where to park the ship, you can just hang out the window and check it out this way!!

A vessel this size has a staff of 11 when out to sea! That's unbelievably small for such a large ship, and that includes a full-time chef. Here is his kitchen!

Bunking area for one staff member. This is plush accommodations!! Larger than a Japanese hotel room, and almost as big as my entire apartment!!

The tables are chained to the floor in case they find some rough water.

On to the good stuff... Here's the inside of the vessel. It looks a lot like a parking garage. There are 6 levels of parking.

Here are some trailers that are secured nice and tight. Majority of freight northbound is cars (given the proximity to Toyota City), and southbound is generally food products or auto parts.

The cars are loading! (Check out the video at the bottom to see this in action!)

Up the ramp they go. (Check out the video at the bottom to see this in action!)

After 28 new vehicles zoom by, they are followed by 2 Fujitrans vans to go pick up the drivers and they do it all over again. It takes about 6 hours to load all of the vehicles.

Group photo outside the ship. Thank goodness the Japanese like taking pictures so much!! I'm in the middle in case you can't pick me out.

Here's an overseas vessel that is being pushed/pulled by two tugboats and taken out to the ocean. This one is not a Fujitrans ship, but it holds 4,000 new cars, takes 2 full days to load, and usually takes 6-9 days to reach it's destination. Generally overseas vessels like this return empty because there are few cars imported to Japan.

The Ferrari I ordered has finally arrived. I guess my bicycle is going to get a break for a while...

Here's a cool "wing" trailer that they use all over Asia. It's convenient for Japan because they have few docks, so the fork lift drivers just come outside and unload it from the side. It's also nice for milkruns because you can pick and choose which freight to unload. Not like a rear-load 53' footer where you have to unload the entire trailer.

Here's a quick video of the cars loading. (You must go directly to the blog to view it.)