

So I started the laser treatment, advised me in the smallest details by the owner, an honest person, who today I can consider not only absolutely reliable, but also extremely skilled as a skin therapist. I was disappointed by the previous experiences I had in various other beauty centers (therefore a bit hesitant) and I was looking for people to whom I could entrust my skin in complete safety. I set foot in the Coco 'Space aesthetic about three years ago, driven by the need to search for a beauty center that did not only offer the usual services, but that also guaranteed me the highest quality, professionalism and friendliness. However, with more tourists discovering the area and encouraging regeneration, perhaps the future for Kamagasaki will be brighter than its past.Simply, a cradle of well-being and beauty. With so many of these men now succumbing to old age, this seems unlikely. She said this because of the huge concentration of skilled men living there, all with years of experience from their past jobs as construction workers.

When the next big earthquake hits Osaka, Kamagasaki will be the first area with its lights back on, my guide had told me as we arrived at the guesthouse. Kanayo-san hopes its reputation will continue to improve as more tourists are attracted by places like Cocoroom popping up in the area. So, while the slightly run down alleyway Cocoroom sits on might not feel as blindingly clean as other areas of Japan, it’s still quite safe. Across Japan, there are very few homeless people and an incredibly low crime rate. While Kamagasaki historically had a reputation for being a less than wholesome part of town, its tainted image is slightly unfair. These school visits give the men the refreshing opportunity to engage with the younger generation and helps children, who will have often been told not to go to that district, realise the area is safe.Ĭocoroom garden What Next for Kamagasaki? Kanayo-san has worked with Streetwise Opera in London on a performance project for the Rio for the Olympics (where a song they composed was performed with the homeless in Brazil) and, in Kamagasaki, takes the men to speak in schools as a way of overturning the area’s unwholesome reputation.

Lots of different products can be recycled in Japan – for example, milk cartons can be turned into material to make business cards. Recycling is left on the doorstep each day to be collected by local homeless people who can earn money by turning in recyclable items.

Some drawn with a confident hands and others, perhaps, less certain.Įventually, some graduate to much more complex pieces such as the intricate paintings of birds, butterflies and flowers on the accessible bathroom block or the swishing tail of a cockerel trailing down the bathroom door.Īs well as its art therapy, Cocoroom helps the community in many other ways: It has a vegetable garden and grows its own crops for lunches and dinners, which guests all eat together Lost property, if not claimed, is redistributed and donated to homeless shelters or orphanages nearby. These are the patterns you’ll see all over Cocoroom: thick and thin, long and short, straight and wavering. Then, putting ‘obstacles’, such as a leaf, in the way to force them to break up their line, she begins to encourage them to make patterns. She believes that if anyone can draw a line, then anyone can be an artist. So, at first, Kanayo-san asks each of them to simply draw lines.
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Many of the men, at first, find it difficult to draw and may not even know how to hold a brush.
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The project became the Kamagasaki Geijutsu Daigaku (Kamagasaki Art University), providing free classes for locals, and its name has spread across the country. Under the guise of serving coffee and food to guests, the homeless begin to visit and take part in art lessons and singing as a way of sharing the struggles they’ve been through. Philanthropist Kanayo Ueda was moved by what these now elderly men had been through and wanted to give them a safe space to express themselves through art – and so, Cocoroom was born.
