Best for last

On our last night in Tokyo, Sayoko-san took us to the office of her friend—journalist, editor, art curator, club designer, book publisher and photographer—Kyoichi Tsuzuki.
At first I thought we were there to see art or some awesome space.





And awesome it was.
His flat—with all the stuff, books, vinyls, art—reminds me of my dad's old music room.



See what I mean?



The first thing I saw was Rei Kawakubo's bench that she did many years ago when she was still doing furniture.
Trivia: Lola Rei is a friend of Kyoichi's; so is Haruki Murakami.



He had really cool stuff. Ana would love this half deer/half bear animal trophy.



His personalized box of Kellogg's



Photobooth matches



Various art pieces



Sato mascots



And then I found out he had published a book called "Happy Victims" among countless others.



Happy Victims is a collection of photographs of some 30 individuals "who have turned the act of shopping into an indefinable obsession, lying somewhere between artistic expression and an unusual kind of fetishism. Worshipping one individual designer, these men and women consume religiously their chosen labels—Jean Paul Gaultier, Anna Sui, Vivienne Westwood—often at the expense of life’s other necessities.
They turn what are typically minute apartments into living temples to their fashion gods – resulting in interiors which range from the breathtakingly cluttered to the manically ordered." (Source)



Kyoichi says, "It’s about how fashion is consumed and appreciated, about the people who are buying these clothes.
Recently I was at a fashion show for the Japanese label Dress Camp. All the media people had seats, and the younger people stood in the back and couldn’t see the show. But they are the customers! I got a seat, but I don’t buy those clothes.
I wanted to see how fans of fashion live. They are not rich. Actually, the people buying these clothes live in a small place, saving their money to buy the clothes, but they don’t have any beautiful place to go. That’s the truth.



"I don’t want to say it’s stupid, but imagine it: A very small room, the person doesn’t have a lot of money but they spend all their money on books, and they fill their small room with books, you wouldn’t say they’re stupid. Right? But a small room filled with Comme des Garçons, looks really stupid, no?
That is our prejudice—that the person who spends all their money on books looks better than the person with Comme des Garçons.*
There’s a hierarchy: Books have the highest position, then records, and fashion is kind of on the bottom. But it’s all the same. It’s how your passion flows." (Source)



*P.S. Perhaps the quote "the person who spends all their money on books looks better than the person with Comme des Garçons" was lost in translation. I totally disagree! Of course the person in Comme looks better, hehe.
That night were lucky to have three books signed by the author himself.



Oh and he and Sayoko gave me this book and lovely bracelet



Yakiniku dinner was just lovely—but I ate too much.



Thank you, Sayoko, Hiko and Kyoichi for a fun, fun evening.