I arrived in Tokyo in around '81. Around that time, I visited London for about two months - it was the period just before Malcolm McLaren released his solo album Duck Rock. I'd met him when he came to Japan, so I visited him in London and spent one evening with him and his girlfriend over at his house. He told me, "London is boring right now. You should go to New York." So he called a friend in New York, who I think was an old assistant or someone who helped him record early hip-hop stuff over there.

When we started Nowhere, maybe the fashion industry recognized something was happening, but they just thought, Oh, those kids . . . whatever. They didn't know what was actually going on with us. Now we are those people in a sense - the current establishment. So I hope there's something happening that is new and independent that we know nothing about.

I used to skate a lot when I was a kid. I loved it and was quite good. When I came back to London in around '85, I got really into skating again. But at the time, it had no influence from hip-hop. It was just thrash rock, hardcore rock, and skulls and all black - that kind of style. In Japan, the skaters were also strictly into rock culture, too, but I was coming from the hip-hop side, so for a while it was difficult to mix both interests.

I actually came from the fashion side, so maybe I knew more about fashion - and music like hip-hop because I was a DJ - so it was really successful when we mixed it all up together.

I arrived in Tokyo in around '81. Around that time, I visited London for about two months - it was the period just before Malcolm McLaren released his solo album Duck Rock. I'd met him when he came to Japan, so I visited him in London and spent one evening with him and his girlfriend over at his house. He told me, "London is boring right now. You should go to New York." So he called a friend in New York, who I think was an old assistant or someone who helped him record early hip-hop stuff over there.

I'm not really an art collector - I'm more of a person who picks up things. I have pieces by people like Gerhard Richter, for example, but then also others by unknown Japanese artists, and not many real art collectors do that.

I think recognition outside of Japan is amazing. I don't feel like that kind of thing would ever happen to me, as I'm not like those kinds of designers - I don't want to express myself in such a categorized way. I kind of want to be in the middle of the majority and the minority. I don't really want people to know what I am.