Hard to measure, but surely there. Vol. 1

Where It All Began

― 見えなくても、確かにそこにあるもの ―

― すべてはここから始まった ―

I am drawn to places where philosophy and story breathe beneath the surface.

Of course, I choose places for convenience and necessity in daily life. However, being there and spending time turns into pleasure when I vividly feel the messages and stories by the maker of the place.

No logic, but I like it.
Nothing special, but I feel comfortable.
Difficult to express with words, but I want to return again and again.

In Japanese, we call this feeling "Nantonaku."

"Nantonaku" I like it.
"Nantonaku" I feel comfortable.
"Nantonaku" I want to come back.

I am sure that anyone has such a "Nantonaku" favourite place.

I ask myself; how do I capture such a feeling?
The answer is quite simple. My physical senses already know before the words do.

I wanted to capture the shape and frame of such a feeling. Yet, I somehow felt that giving words to the feeling may cause something essential to withdraw. The thing I tried to do might be Busui. I have been wishing to express it in words, still.

In this journal, I decided to write about the days I had been searching for the shape and frame of "Nantonaku" as a trilogy.

* Busui: a concept rooted in downtown Tokyo culture, from the Edo to Showa era — to act without elegance or sensitivity. The opposite is "Iki": refined, tasteful, and knowing. Spending much of my childhood in downtown Tokyo, these were values I absorbed without even noticing.

The journey to find the answer began in downtown Tokyo.

My mother was born there — a true "Edo-kko." The term describes people born and raised in the eastern part of old Tokyo, around areas like Asakusa and Nihonbashi, known for their distinct working-class culture and sharp, spirited character.

Her parents — my grandparents — ran a Geta shop. Geta are traditional Japanese wooden sandals, worn with kimono. The neighbourhood felt like one big family; almost every household ran some kind of small business — a bakery, a butcher, a greengrocer. This was still very much alive during my childhood, in what the Japanese calendar calls the "late Showa era." The Geta shop had become a shoe shop by then, but the spirit of the neighbourhood hadn't changed that much.

I really loved helping out at the shop with my relatives.

Chatting with customers, understanding what they were really looking for beneath the conversation, selecting items together, exchanging goods for cash. That money then became the groceries for dinner, or the soft-serve ice cream my grandmother would buy me. That was "economy" to me.

Looking back, it feels entirely natural that after university, I found myself stepping into a career in the service industry — face to face with people, just as I always had been.

I worked in that world for a while. My first job was as a café staff member, at a company that was pioneering in the retail industry at the time — what we now call a "lifestyle brand," though that concept was far from common back then. Working there meant you were seen as someone with a good eye — tasteful, culturally aware, ahead of the curve.

After that, I moved through several different roles in the service and hospitality industry, including a hotel. And the more I worked, the more questions I found myself carrying.

They could be distilled into two. Why is service so rarely considered holistically from the very beginning, at the ideation stage? And why is the inner state of the people delivering the service almost always overlooked?

Life brought a series of challenges in my twenties and early thirties. I struggled — not just professionally, but in a deeper sense — searching for a place where I could finally breathe as my truest self.

In 2011, I crossed the ocean. It was a dream I had carried since my teenage years: to live in Europe. London became my home. I studied English hard, and in my second year in the UK, I received an offer from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

That was where I encountered Service Design.

The moment I understood what it was, something clicked. This was it — exactly what I had been searching for, without even knowing the name for it. I fell for it completely, the way you fall for someone you were always meant to meet.

I completed my Masters thesis — A New Vista For Service Design: An Employee-Centric Perspective — and graduated from CSM. Shortly after, I received funding to pursue a PhD at Loughborough University. I packed my stuff and headed to the quiet university town in the English Midlands, full of passion and certainty — certain of my brilliant future.

To be continued…