I was happily pregnant when I decided to visit Tokyo again in April 1986.  I had stopped there after my trip to China in 1981, but it was winter then and raining most of the time; so I decided to go for the flowering of the cherry blossoms.  A couple of dear old friends from Rome, Nina and Marcello, were now living there, and they graciously accepted me as a house guest.  We did cook up a storm of Italian food, I met other expats, I went to jazz clubs (Marcello played base),  I attended fashion shows and took a weekend trip to Kyoto with Nina.  I found Tokyo the most advanced metropolis in the world, civilized with all the best of European, American and Asian culture. I was amazed by a record store housed in a four-story building with a room entirely devoted to Mozart.

I had made a photographic study of American teenagers the previous year, culminating in an exhibit at an L.A. gallery in January 1986, and I thought it would be interesting to document the look of fashionable Japanese teenagers in Tokyo; so that was my plan.

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