This is Part 10 of a series on Toyota Motor Corp.'s extensive involvement in sports.
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About 230 fans followed Toyota Motor Corp.'s women's basketball team, the Antelopes, for their W League away match against Chanson V-Magic in Shizuoka on Oct. 16.
Buses were sent out from Toyota's head office in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, and the firm's office in Nagoya, where members of the team are based. Employees from Toyota affiliates in Shizuoka also came to cheer the team to a 51-48 victory.
Toyota captain Emi Kudeken said: "It's great to have support. People come to see our games wherever we play."
For Toyota, getting employees to sporting fixtures is part of company policy. It organizes tours to help reduce transportation costs to games and sometimes supplies tickets.
In the past, the company even chartered a bullet train to Tokyo to get employees to national-level rugby and baseball games between city teams.
The automaker regards teamwork as essential to the complex business of building cars. It believes sports offers one way of achieving the difficult task fostering a sense of unity among the more than 300,000 group employees inside and outside of Japan.
It does not disclose how much it spends on getting co-workers to company team games, but Toshiyuki Nonaka, head of Toyota's human resources division, says the costs are seen as part of its personnel management.
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