My visit to Spoon was one of the most eagerly looked-forward to side-event of my TMS visit to Tokyo. Before I left for Tokyo, I had already tried to contact Spoon via email for this visit. However, there were initially no response from them. But the calvary arrived in the form of one of my TOVA readers who is currently residing in Tokyo. TD as I shall call him actually took the initiative to call up the Spoon office on my behalf and when he emailed me, he had already arranged everything for me, including getting Spoon's Chief Operating Officer Imamura Yuki to get in touch with me to finalize the date and itenary of the visit ! It was fantastic work on the part of TD and my only regret is that he chose to remain anonymous so I am not able to properly give him due recognition for his excellent help.

The Spoon building in located Ogikubo which is in Suginami-ku. Ogikubo itself is a city while Suginami-ku (Suginami City Ward) is something like an entire district comprising several cities. (Tokyo is made up of many of these city-wards and prefectures and is a super-Metropolis like London, etc). Ogikubo itself seems to be generally less over-developed than central Tokyo (which is where famous places like Shinjuku, Ginza, Akihabara, etc are located). Buildings are generally lower and the streets are narrower, no skyscrapers are readily visible. I took the train from Tanakawadai to Ogikubo, a 20+ minutes ride and from the Ogikubo station, made my way to Spoon on foot. By the way, don't let the word 'train' mislead you. Think of the Tokyo train network as the world's most comprehensive and most complex mass transport system. I have taken the London tube, Paris' subway and also the subway/train in various cities in the US, HongKong, Singapore, etc and in my humble opinion, none of them comes close to the Tokyo system ! Anyway, to find my way from Ogikubo station to Spoon, I printed the guide-map from the Spoon website. Having spent most of the previous week in central Tokyo however, I was misled by the scale of the map. It was very comprehensive and shows every single street and I didn't realize that some of the streets shown are actually small narrow back-lanes ! As a result I went into the wrong street the first time and subsequently eventhough I was on the correct street, I wasn't 100% sure and had to retrace my steps at least 3 times. This resulted in me being late for my appointment.

The original planned date for the Spoon visit I arranged with Imamura-san was for Friday October 24th but after I arrived in Tokyo, I decided to change the date to Saturday October 25th. Accordingly I called up Imamura-san to request for the change which he graciously agreed to. In the event, I think it was a bad decision on my part since when I arrived on Saturday, the Spoon office was closed ! Luckily I had the presence of mind to find my way upstairs to their office to find both Imamura-san and Ichishima-san waiting patiently for my arrival. It then struck me that Spoon do not work on Saturdays ! I was quickly embarassed that I requested for the visit on a non-working day and it shows a lot on the graciousness of Spoon that they agreed to my request for a visit on the day they are supposed to be resting ! The other problem with the October 24th date was that Ichishima-san had another appointment at 12pm and since I lost my way initially when walking from the Ogikubo train station to the Spoon office, I arrived 15 minutes late ! Nevertheless, we quickly got down to the visit proper.

The first thing is of course getting the initial introduction, with Ichishima wanting to know what publication I represent and so forth. Then it was a feeble attempt on my part to interview him which quickly turned into a mind-boggling tour of the Spoon facility. After covering the main Spoon building itself, Ichishima took me on the company van to the Type-One building, a short distance away from the Spoon building. Then, all too soon the visit has to be concluded. Ichishima-san waited patiently but when it was getting to be around 11:30pm so he quickly asked me to get on the company van and sent me back to the Spoon office where I collected my stuff. It was here that I took the only photo of him but he had to quickly bid farewell to me since his 12:00pm appointment was coming up fast. So I was left to make my way home after bidding farewell to Ichishima-san.