We did not see anyplace to store luggage at Toyota. The lockers would only hold a medium sized purse at best. One thing that might help you is that luggage forwarding services are very common in Japan and you can easily forward from one hotel to another. This would save you from having to carry your luggage around on the commuter trains out to the plant. They are not expensive and are very reliable. I have used them without problem.

You can go directly through their website and follow the steps to make a reservation online.

If I recall correctly, the tour took about 2 hours. The journey from Nagoya to Toyota for the tour was over 1 hour plus some walking. The Hikari Shinkansen takes about 40 minutes from Kyoto station to Nagoya station, but the schedule for Hikari is much more limited than Nozomi (which you cannot use with the JR pass). Note: If you are not yet aware of Hyperdia, it's a great route-planning tool for Japan. You can tell it what station you want to start at and finish at, and it has an option to exclude the Nozomi/Mizuho/Hayabusa trains, which are the Shinkansen lines you can't take with a JR pass.

I stayed in the Daiwa Roynet Hotel Nagoya ekimae. Its close to Nagoya Station. It took me approximately 1hr20mins to get to get there but I would allow more time as a precaution. Hope you enjoy!

The bus goes to the Kaikan but it is the last stop. There are 4-6 stops below the station on the street and it was a little confusing but we figured it out in time and got the right bus. You have to be able to read the name in Japanese. You can take a taxi there but it is going to much higher in price. Best is to show the name of the place or say it. Coming back by bus too was a little difficult finding the exact bus stop.

You can use the hyperdia website to help you in your route planning. The timings are accurate. If you are using a JR pass, remember to exclude the trains you are not allowed to ride on while planning your route on the website.

Train station next to the museum, take linimo line, just use Google map

I assume it’s a day tripper. You need to take Shinkansen to the nearest stop to the Kaikan then take local train. The Kaikan is not really worth visiting unless you’re going for factory tour. After that you can go to the Toyota automobile museum then to Nagoya to take Shinkansen back to Tokyo. Doable in one day

The English tour is at 11 am. Be there no later than 10:30. Great tour.

They have lockers and a storage room where they can store luggage, bags and belongings and issue you with a ticket to identify your belongings. You do not enter the storage room as the staff are the only ones allowed in there.