"Isetan Men's Stroll," a popular series in which Isetan Men's buyers explore interesting spots with curators from various fields, will feature none other than Ken Mitsuishi, one of Japan's leading supporting actors, whose fashion and lifestyle also attracts attention, in its seventh installment.

The buyer who joined us was Takayuki Inoue, who also appeared in the fifth installment of this series and toured famous American traditional clothing stores. Together with Mr. Mitsuishi, who experienced the American traditional boom in real time, we strolled through the Yanaka, Nezu, and Sendagi area, where old and new cultures intertwine.

'HOTEL GRAPHY Nezu' offers a stay that feels like you're living in a retro town.

Ken Mitsuishi (hereinafter, Mitsuishi) : To be honest, I haven't been to the area known as "Yanaka, Nezu, Sendagi" very often, but I'm surprised to see such a stylish place there now. Do you often come to places like this, Inoue-san?

Takayuki Inoue (hereinafter, Inoue): I haven't been here very often myself, but this time I got a lot of information from an acquaintance who is familiar with the area, and I was able to pick out some places that I thought Mr. Mitsuishi might like.

Mitsuishi: Oh really! Thank you so much for taking the time to tell me. It's really refreshing. It's kind of nice, isn't it? When I went to Chiang Mai in Thailand before, and a little outside the center of Bangkok, it seemed like there were more and more cool hotels like this that were renovated from old buildings.

Looking at the clientele , it seems like there are a lot of tourists from overseas. When traveling abroad, it's really nice to stay in a calm, local area like this, rather than in the middle of a busy big city.

Mitsuishi: I really long to stay in a quiet place like this, sit in a chair, and read a book at my leisure, but no matter how old I get, I always want to go to bustling places, so I can't really do it (laughs). But the weather is nice today, so it feels really good to relax in a place like this. By the way, Inoue, that's a nice polo shirt you're wearing (laughs).

Mr. Mitsuishi Inoue too (laughs). We're wearing matching ones. I actually read in an article somewhere that you like Lacoste polo shirts, so I asked you to wear your favorite one today, thinking it might give us something to talk about. What size is it?

Mitsuishi, this is size 4, right? How about you, Inoue?

Inoue: I chose a slightly larger size, a size 6. I usually wear a cap even with a jacket and trousers, but a cap with a polo shirt looks a bit too golfy, so I went with a beanie today. Mitsuishi, have you always liked Lacoste?

When I first came to Tokyo in my late teens and early twenties, I bought lots of Izod Lacoste shirts in different colors from vintage clothing stores and wore them all the time. Back then, vintage Izod shirts were sold for around 5,800 yen, which was much cheaper than the Japanese-made licensed versions, so I wore only vintage Izod shirts. French Lacoste shirts weren't very common back then either. I think it was around 1988 that vintage French clothing started to become available.

Inoue: For me too, it started with vintage Izod clothing. I think that's how I grew to love vintage clothing.

Mitsuishi: When I first moved to Tokyo, I really didn't have any money, so I bought clothes all the time at vintage clothing stores. Even back then, there were cool stores in Harajuku like Santa Monica and Chicago. Then Dept opened in the basement along Meiji Street. It was really spacious, with a concrete interior, a pink kidney-shaped counter and stools, and they would serve you coffee there. There were tons of great vintage clothes that they had imported from LA, and you could get a nice shirt for 2,800 or 3,800 yen. I was really surprised when Dept opened. When did you start to take an interest in fashion, Inoue-san?

Inoue: I played baseball all the time from elementary school through high school, so I think I was pretty late to discover fashion. But perhaps because of the area I grew up in, Yokosuka, my father was always into American casual fashion and surfed, and my mother graduated from Bunka Fashion College and worked at a department store, so I think I naturally became interested in it. I myself graduated from Bunka Fashion College and got a job at a department store, so that's definitely my mother's influence. My father is around the same age as Mitsuishi-san, so I think he was influenced by similar things.

Mitsuishi Yokosuka! I was born in the countryside of Kitakyushu, so I think our environments are completely different (laughs). I read Popeye in a place with nothing much to see and just longed for that kind of culture. There was no ocean nearby, so surfing was just a pipe dream. But I think I was in my third year of junior high school when I saw young people riding skateboards down hills in Popeye magazine and thought, "That's so cool!" So I went around town looking for a skateboard. I finally found a place that sold them, and looking back now, they were cheap fakes, but I saved up money and bought one, and whenever I found a hill I'd skate on.

Inoue Slalom, right? My father also did cruising as a result of surfing, so after I retired from my club activities in the summer of my third year of high school, I followed my father and tried surfing and skateboarding, although I wasn't very good at them.

I remember trying it out when Mitsuishi High School opened a skate park near Hakata Station, but I couldn't do it at all. That's because back then, we'd only ever seen pictures of skateboards in magazines, and nobody had ever actually seen one in action (laughs).

I think Mitsuishi Inoue is really cool and wonderful, with his relaxed yet stylish fashion and lifestyle. I saw photos of his home in a previous interview, but have you bought anything new recently? I also bought a condo in 2020 and tried to furnish it, but I haven't been able to make it look really cool...

Mitsuishi : No, not at all anymore (laughs). I was just putting on a cool act for the interview, and now there's no trace of that. Ever since we got a dog 10 years ago, our house has been overflowing with dog stuff. And lately, his legs and back have been getting weaker, so it's dangerous for him to slip on the hardwood floors, so we've laid yoga mats all the way from the living room to the entrance. It's not cool at all, but I can't help it. It's for him (laughs). We grew up with magazines, so we liked wearing these kinds of clothes, listening to these kinds of music, eating these kinds of food, and reading these kinds of things. But because we were forcing ourselves to do it, it inevitably ended up looking unnatural, but people of this generation can do anything naturally. I'm jealous.

Inoue: Really? (laughs) I admire the style of cool seniors like Mitsuishi-san, and I feel like I'm imitating them and adapting them to my own generation. We're planning to move to a bar in Yanaka next, so I hope I can learn how to behave in places like that from Mitsuishi-san as well.

[Coming Soon!!!!] To be continued in Part 2