These benches in Tokyo show how pencils are made

Mitsubishi Pencil Company (TYO)’s benches outside its new offices in Tokyo are elegantly fitting.

A Twitter user walking by the company’s next headquarters, which is under construction, noticed benches showing the various stages of how pencils are constructed.

Roughly translated, the tweet reads: “The bench lies next to the head office building of Mitsubishi enpitsu, which is in the middle of construction. I was impressed by its edge design to resemble pencil; however, more touched by the fact of representation of manufacture process of the pencil if you look from the bench in the back to the one in the front.”

The second image features a series of shots showing the process (in order from 1-6).

Labeled in order, these pictures show the progress of pencil creation. (Photo: Twitter user @pomo/Yahoo Finance)
Labeled in order, these pictures show the progress of pencil creation. (Photo: Twitter user @pomo/Yahoo Finance)

Mitsubishi Pencil Company is a Japanese-based company that manufactures Uni and Uni-ball pens and pencils. Founded in 1887, Mitsubishi Pencil reported net income of about ¥8.4 billion — about $75 million, according to the August 11 exchange rate — at the end of 2017.

The GIFs below, roughly corresponding to the stages shown by the benches, show how pencils are made at Kita-Boshi Pencil Co. Ltd.:

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Step 4:

Step 5:

Step 6:

The Uni-ball account saw the tweet and responded (translated): “Glad that you noticed it! Thank you very much! We will be moving to the new building during Obon week [which is Monday, August 13 and ends on Thursday, August 16)]. Thank you.”

Here’s a full video of pencil’s being made:

Guanhao Yan contributed to this post.

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