When you open the door to the factory, you feel as though you have walked into a secret garden.

A machine large enough to take up the entirety of a studio apartment lets out a loud “whirrrrr, whirrrr” sound. The digits on the digital meter change from moment to moment.

Just what do they make here? We can’t contain our excitement.

The 2nd floor sign was made by the same company that made the 5th floor sign, Kōshingi-ken. The scale of this work is large for such a small company, with a length of about 40 meters. It took the whole first floor of the company’s three-story office to make this item.

The machine that is making that sound is a “CNC machine,” and it uses a computer control system to make even the most elaborate and delicate processing possible. You enter in the 3D data for length, width, and depth, and it automatically creates something which matches those numerical values. Some of these machines are so large a grown adult could stand inside them, and they cost upwards of tens of millions of yen.

After the machine is done processing, the doors open to quite the spectacle.

You feel as if you are in a Sci-Fi movie, looking into the robot’s cockpit. With a dramatic “Whoosh!”, the door opens and the finished product appears.

It’s unfortunate that you aren’t able to see it with your own eyes. Those who like giant robots would probably love it.

The sign for the 2nd floor is made of aluminum and covered in holes of different sizes. If you look at it from far away you can see that these holes actually make the number 2.

Even if you use the same size drill, by adjusting how deep you drill into the board, you can change the size of the holes. Kōshingiken was in charge of creating the holes in the board, and another company took care of the film and coating. This is another example of Ōta-ku’s pride and joy, its division of labor.

Just as each hole comes together on the surface, the different factories in Ōta-ku come together and work as one collaborative body. This sign is representative of that fact. Lastly, let’s head over to the 1st floor signage.