Awesome Japan

Only in Japan host John Daub takes us inside the Komatsu Fireworks Company for a look at how they handmake their shells. Some fireworks can take months to create, each starting with a tiny ceramic ball at its center, built up in layers to produce effects. Their largest shell can produce an explosion nearly 1/2 a mile across.

The members of the Japanese group Bozestyle are proud of their bald heads. In fact, they’ve made them part of their performances. To bring their music to life, they rig their heads with buttons that can be used to trigger electronic sounds. Their version of The Imperial March is one of our favorites, but check out their Instagram for more.

Process X visited Marusho Co., a Japanese factory that makes metal toys. During this production run, you’ll see how they create tiny airplanes by cutting sheet metal into strips, stamping their fuselages, and assembling the parts. It’s amazing to see how much handwork goes into creating each toy.

This unique utensil was designed by Masami Takahashi for diners at the Japanese ramen chain Sugakiya. The stainless steel spoon/fork combo makes it easy to enjoy both the delicious noodles and broth at the same time, and without wasting disposable chopsticks.

After making a homebrew hovercraft with a leaf blower, Hideyasu Ito created his own unique take on the air-cushioned ride, a single-person hovercraft that floats on four plastic bubbles. Tom Scott had the rare privilege to meet the inventor and take his amazing creation for a ride.

Masks have been part of Japanese culture for more than a thousand years. Process X takes us inside, Womokage, a small company that makes these detailed masks the traditional way. Skilled artisans use chisels to carve facial features from a solid block of wood, then hand-apply a coating and paint pigments to bring out details.

Locking up your bicycle to a rack or pulling your car into a marked space seem like nice, low-tech approaches to parking. Tom Scott explains why some locations in Japan have adopted a much more complicated system, using underground garages and massive, robotically-controlled systems for parking bikes and cars.

Process X takes us inside Japan’s Miura Golf Co. to see how the factory produces heads for golf clubs. They start by chopping up steel rods, then heating, shaping, stamping, fine-tuning, polishing, and sandblasting them until a club head emerges. The process for making wood golf clubs is quite different.

If there’s one thing humans use a lot of, it’s toilet paper. This video from Process X takes us inside Japan’s Marutomi Paper Co., a factory that cranks out millions of rolls of the stuff every month. They start with stacks of paper pulp that they wet and press into massive rolls, which they then print, wrap around cores, and slice.

Pencils and pasta have more in common than you might think. Process X takes us inside a factory in Japan that makes pencil leads using a similar process to making spaghetti. After mixing raw ingredients, they extrude them into soft noodles, then cut them. Though instead of boiling them, they bake then soak them in hot oil.

If you’ve eaten at a Japanese restaurant, you’ve probably seen a maneki-neko. These decorative cat figurines are believed to bring good luck to those who possess one, so they’re incredibly popular. Process X visited the Umetsuki Tomimoto Doll Garden factory, birthplace of roughly 80% of ceramic maneki-neko sold in Japan.

Take a trip to Japan with each sip from this glass inspired by the shape of the famed Mount Fuji. While it works for sipping whiskey, we like how the foamy head from beer resembles the snow-capped peak of the 12,380-foot-tall mountain. Holds 360 ml or about 12 oz.

Process X takes us inside the Ishii Sports shoe factory to see how artisans create boots by hand. Each shoe starts by cutting shapes out of leather, refining its edges, then gluing and stitching the pieces together, adding lace rivets, and nailing it around a wooden form before sewing on its insole and attaching the layers of its sole.

The manhole covers here in the U.S. are pretty utilitarian. But in Japan, manhole covers can be works of urban art. This video from Process X takes us inside a high-tech factory that turns raw steel into embossed discs, then has artists embellish them with colorful enamels applied with squeeze bottles.

We love watching videos of factories making things we take for granted. Process X takes us inside the Nitinen factory in Japan that makes 17 million cans of butane fuel each year. The assembly line ballet starts with printed metal blanks which they bend and assemble into cans, then attach lids, valves, and eventually fill with gas.

Process X takes us inside Japan’s Kita-Boshi Pencil Co., a factory that cranks out pencils by the thousands each day, shaving shapes out of cedar and cypress wood and filling them with leads before gluing them together, shaping, and sharpening them. Oh, and if you need an eraser, they’ve got you covered.