Hell on Wheels - Freak Japanese Motorcycles by Kyoichi Tsuzuki

records, CDs, knickknacks, clothing, musical instruments, and just plain well loved personal pleasures. But within that mess, there are many books. Many of the apartments profiled here are lived in by younger creative/artistic/bohemian folks who have more stuff than I do and much less space to store it in. That may exist somewhere in Japan, but not within the pages of this book. The author and photographer of Tokyo: A Certain Style set out to show the world lifestyles outside the cliché/dream idea of Japanese living as minimalism and extreme neatness. What I did find was something interesting in its own right. Suffice it to say, I didn't find that here. I'd wondered what large speakers in a relatively small space would look like. I had read about Japanese audiophiles who live in small living spaces with large, high efficiency loudspeakers powered by low powered amplifiers. That was the case for me with Tokyo: A Certain Style. Sometimes you open a book looking for one thing and find quite another.

This fascinating, voyeuristic look at modern life comes in a chunky, pocket-sized format-the perfect coffee table book for people with really small apartments. His captions to the hundreds of photographs capture the spirit and ingenuity required to live in such small quarters. Tsuzuki introduces each tiny crash pad with a brief text about who lives there, from artists and students to professionals and couples with children.

Hundreds of photographs reveal the real Tokyo style: microapartments, mini and modular everything, rooms filled to the rafters with electronics, piles of books and clothes, clans of remote controls, collections of sundry objects all crammed into a space where every inch counts. Photographer Kyoichi Tsuzuki rode his scooter all over Tokyo snapping shots of how urban Japanese really live. Tokyo: A Certain Style, the mini-sized decor book with a difference, shows how, for those living in one of the worlds most expensive and densely packed metropolises, closet-sized apartments stacked to the ceiling with gadgetry and CDs are the norm.

Ah, think of the serene gardens, tatami mats, Zen-inspired decor, sliding doors, and shoji screens of the typical Japanese home.

Hell on Wheels - Freak Japanese Motorcycles by Kyoichi Tsuzuki