When I was about 15 or 16 years old, I remember being completely captivated by the Levi's jeans, named with three-digit numbers like 501, while flipping through a brochure I had picked up at a clothing store. At the time, young men with long hair, clad in tastefully faded denim and adorned with expensive Native American jewelry on their chests and fingers, were everywhere in youth magazines like Hot Dog. In the countryside where I lived, treasures like those featured in the magazines were rare sights. That's why I used those magazines as textbooks, studying in advance where and how much I could get them. Whenever I had the chance to visit the city for a mock university entrance exam, I shopped with excitement and anticipation. It's a memory I look back on fondly. Thirty-five years have passed since then. Levi's is still going strong today, and now, as an adult, I find myself indulging in the luxury of buying reissues of vintage models that were too expensive for me back then.

In my childhood, my family was not so wealthy. My allowance was smaller than those around me. I never played the arcade games my friends used to play for 50 yen a time. Instead, I was carefully nibbling on a box of snacks, which were more than enough for 10 yen.

The clothes are all given to me by my relatives. I couldn't buy expensive shoes like Nike, adidas, or puma, and it sounded good to say that they were unmarked, but I didn't know where they came from.