[My Resume 4] "Last Hibiya Line, Higashi Ginza - Roppongi, 7 minutes walk to Nishiazabu"

In 1985, when I entered my third year of university, I finally began my life as an assistant to the person I had always admired. However, the difficulty was beyond imagination. The routine goes something like this.

In the morning, we met at Toku's apartment in Daikanyama or at the TOOLS office. I wandered around the city all day collecting things and conducting interviews. If everything went smoothly, I headed to Magazine House and Popeye Editorial Department in Higashi Ginza in the evening. From there, it's more of a chat than work? Circle activities? This will start a conversation with the staff. It would be impossible to do that now, but at the time there was no one in the Popeye editorial department, let alone in the morning, until about 3 p.m. I wonder if there are student part-time jobs or not. This is why fieldwork in the true sense of the word was being carried out. The more the night went on, the more people gathered, and the more people gathered, the more ideas started flying around, which eventually became plans and pages, creating an ideal cycle.

I'm a PayPay person, so just surrendering to the groove of Popeye All Stars gives me ``fashion sickness'' or ``magazine sickness.'' That also felt good. But I'm an assistant after all, so I don't have the luxury of immersing myself in such pleasures. My work time begins before the last train.

TOOLS BAR recreated at the memorial event held in 2015

Because I have to go to TOOLS BAR. It's so popular that the line waiting to get in can be several tens of meters long. The staff at Proper stamps their hands at the entrance and receives an entrance fee (as a sign that they can re-enter), which is a general process, and that's why I'm standing next to them. The reason I worked there was because I was in charge of judging the faces of people in the industry. Now and in the past, ``people in the industry hate waiting in line,'' which is understandable. There's a sense of superiority that comes from walking into a store, ignoring the line and looking at the general customers waiting to get in. However, since the staff at Proper couldn't tell by their faces, I (and my senior assistant) were given that role.

So, to be honest, I didn't get along well with the guys at the store. Because if it were true, it would be free if you had to pay the entrance fee, and some people even gave out drinks for free. But it is also true that such people created the atmosphere of the store, so I guess Mr. Mito and Mr. Kondo decided that it was better to do so. But over time, he gradually becomes friends with the staff, who have no connection to the water business. Mr. H, who is now a photographer, and Mr. M-kun, who later joined BEAMS. Among them, ``Osamu'' appears as a ``bad friend'' who continues to push me around, for better or for worse, and is exactly what the dictionary calls him, but I'll talk about that next time.