Shunichiro Tsuji, 62, is president of Nissan Chuzousho Ltd., Japan's last surviving beigoma maker, located in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture. Beigoma are small cast-iron spinning tops that are spun in a game that has been a favorite with kids and grown-ups in Japan for many generations. Tsuji has been playing with beigoma since he was a toddler and even now, not a day goes by that he doesn't spin a few rounds with friends. To play the game, a 110-cm-long cotton cord is wrapped around a beigoma, which is then thrown on to a piece of canvas spread over a plastic bucket, while the cord is released. Beigoma are the predecessors of beyblades, the plastic spinning tops that took the world by storm in the late 1990s. Back then, when the popularity of beyblades span out of control and beigoma sales dropped, Tsuji kept his cool, and his factory busy. As a fourth-generation monozukuri craftsman, meaning one dedicated to manufacturing excellence, he has also been producing car parts and motors for Japan's top makers. Car parts or beigoma, Tsuji knows how to make things spin faster and for longer.

If you want to know what's happening in the world, play beigoma! Beigoma is a city game, perfect for the asphalt jungle. In the countryside there are other fun things to do, but downtown, where space is limited, beigoma rules. You see the world from street level, from where people walk and where alley cats and dogs wander. The game is down-to-earth and so are the people who play it.

Even high-tech robots are born in small family-owned factories. In my city, Kawaguchi, within just a one- or two-km radius, we can make the parts for, and put together, anything: a truck, a plane, or a robot. There are hundreds of tiny factories like mine that manufacture the most important parts for any product you can think of. Even a space rocket!