The other day we took Hana on a tour of the Kewpie Mayonnaise factory in Kurihashi, which is not too far from my house although it is also the middle of nowhere. The tour is geared towards little kids, so it opens with a stupid animation of some kids battling and evil bad-nutrition villain with mayonnaise-covered vegetables. Then you get to walk around the hallways of the factory and look down at the machines running through some windows. You get to see everything that goes into the production of the sickly sweet goo the Japanese call mayonnaise. The machines are pretty cool; they've got one that they invented for cracking eggs and separating the whites from the yolks. The whole production is mechanized; there are some people on the floor but it doesn't look like they have that much to do. Unfortunately the tour runs in reverse order, so you see the finished boxes of mayonnaise bottles being loaded into the trucks, then the bottles being put into boxes, then the finished mayo being bottled, then the bottles being made, then the mayo being mixed, then the eggs being cracked. They're really proud of their egg-cracking machine and spend a good bit of time on it, but overall there's not enough time looking at the machines and nothing at all hands-on about the tour. At the end, they lead you into this room with a big pile of lettuce in it, and give you free reign to sample any of their many salad dressings, all of which are available for purchase on your way out. They also have a big grassy knoll out in front of the factory, which I think was Hana-chan's favorite part.