the 1964 tokyo olympics cauldron was made of agishi. but it's been losing ground to cheaper stone from china and elsewhere. this area once had about 400 masonry businesses but now half have closed. aji ota is a core member of the project. he's a master carver of gravestones. but recently he applied those skills to create a table. >> translator: i'm excited because a stone mason like myself rarely has a chance to do something new. >> reporter: ota had never produced furniture before so he teamed up with two industrial designers from tokyo. >> translator: we want our table to look good when it's displayed next to tables made of other materials. >> reporter: the designers suggested a simple design that would suit any room. but executing it required great skill. to keep the table light, its top couldn't be thicker than two centimeters. stone cut that thin however, is easy to break during tooling. also, while ota's gravestones are highly polished he wanted to give this surface a different treatment. it took him six months of trial and error,