"I always wanted to travel, so I got into hairdressing because it' a skill that's useful anywhere.

I studied first in Tokyo, and got my domestic license, and then headed for London. My original intention was to keep travelling, but I liked London so much I decided to stay. I liked the music, the fashion, everything. I went to hairdressing school there, then I went to Gibraltar for four months while my work visa was being processed. I survived by giving haircuts on the beach. Everyone knew me; I was the only Oriental there. One time, someone put around the rumour that I was a black belt in karate or kung fu or something; it was a lot of fun.

After four years in London, Mrs Thatcher made it more difficult for visas to be extended so I had to leave and come back to Tokyo. My wife, who's British, joined me the following year. For a while, I worked with my brother, who runs a high class salon here. Most of the clients were frustrated housewives. They were really fussy and picky about everything - the music we played, the way we talked, the way we dressed. I hated that. I'd already met my business partner in London, and we wanted to do something funky and groovy, not just looking after housewives! It's easier money, running that kind of salon, but we wanted to be groovy hairdressers!

We hit lucky and found this place in Harajuku just before the bubble, before land prices and rents went crazy, and we've been here ever since. It was difficult at first, because if you decide to attract art school students and funky groovy kids, it's not easy to make money. That market is unstable; kids don't have much money, they're always changing their minds, changing fashion. It's very unsafe. But we both speak fluent English and we trained in gaijin hair salons, so we started to get a lot of gaijin customers coming to us. Now they make up about 50% of our business.

The difference between gaijin hair and Japanese hair is basically the chemical reaction. Gaijin hair you can colour easily, but Japanese hair goes kind of red if you bleach it. The problem is the salons here use Japanese products; that's why so many Japanese girls who want to 'go Western' end up with orange hair. Here, we have lots of toner that Japanese salons don't use, so we get good results. A lot of salons think it's cool to have gaijin customers: they see it as upper class and artistic. But they've never studied gaijin hair, so they make mistakes. I can't tell you the number of times I've had to fix hair that's been screwed up in other salons.

Current fashions? Well, Japanese girls are really into hair colouring, highlighting. They're getting very adventurous; they're into 70's fashion, blonde highlighting, that sort of thing. As for the boys, they're getting their hair cut really short; they want to look like the guys in Trainspotting, with long sideburns. English guys, too, usually go for a short crop. As for gaijin women, it varies greatly but they're usually career girls so they want something practical, just wash and walk out. Japanese girls are a lot more fussy.

I'm still excited about hairdressing. We get people from all over the world here, it's really stimulating and I like meeting people. Also it's very creative work. It's like sculpture, you can grade it, paint it, shape it. And you can make people really happy. Hairdressing is one of those rare occupations where you can do that. They may come in feeling stressed, but they get a massage and a groovy haircut, and they feel happy when they leave. It's not like a doctor's. There, if someone comes back you know there's something wrong; they're not feeling good. Here, when people come back it's because they want to."

Kaz spoke to Rob Prince