If you were a Shibuya regular 20 years ago, chances are you would have seen, or even made contact with, Kohki Hasei. Fresh from an Okayama high school, he came to seek his fortune on the streets of the capital. The first job he landed was selling rings and Zippo lighters on Center Gai street.
"I was just a punk kid," Hasei tells The Japan Times. "I really didn't know what to do with my life, apart from getting by and finding my own thing, whatever that may have been."
Getting by was hard on a street vendor's pay. One day, however, in a twist of fate that most people can only dream of, one of Hasei's customers turned out to be a TBS employee.