① The "Haguregumo Workshop” in Minamata City, Kumamoto Prefecture, is a paper-making workshop started by Junpei Kanazashi thirty years ago. They use traditional materials like mulberry bark as well as banana leaves, onion skin, even worn-out jeans to make paper. Junpei’s wife Hiroko raises her own cotton and flowers to make colored cloth. According to Junpei, Japan is unique in how its art was developed through things to use in one’s life, as opposed to things to view and appreciate like in Europe. Japan was once a society of recycling, living in harmony with nature. Junpei seeks to keep that wisdom alive through his work, and to show it to the world. ② A new measuring scale is revolutionizing Japan’s vegetable sorting industry. The “Table Combi” developed by OK Planning (based in Kumamoto City) is a measuring device that notifies workers of an appropriate produce combination the moment its scales have found one. Company president Mitsuru Hatae departed his desk job in his forties and started a company with the goal of making produce packaging as easy on the workers as he could. To make measuring scales makers of produce really need, he spends his days bouncing back and forth between his office and farmer worksites. It’s been three years since they started development, and now this venture business of five employees is aiming for national and international business with their unique strategies.