On the second floor of a building facing Kotto-dori in Tokyo's Aoyama district, businessmen dressed in stylish suits show up one after another, take a seat on stools, and enjoy chatting with the owner over cups of coffee. Jazz plays in the antique-style shop lit by soft ambient light, creating an atmosphere in the heart of the city that is somehow tinged with nostalgia. Peering over the wooden counter, the men watch as the owner's hands move like magic, bringing a brilliant shine to--is it glass? No, shoes! The businessmen take a minute to relax here and watch their shoes being shined before heading to their next appointment. That's right--Brift H is not a café or bar, but a shoe lounge specializing in shoe shining.

"This place is my dream--the place itself is a dream, and it makes dreams come true," says Yuya Hasegawa, the owner of Brift H, who is now the focus of much attention for his work as a bootblack. Though he looks like a boy as he talks about his dream, he is also a business owner with his eyes set firmly on the future. Despite his clean-cut appearance, one can feel the passion simmering within him; even as an occasional expression belies his underlying self-confidence, Hasegawa manages to maintain his modesty. Just 24, this young business owner's motto is "revolution begins from the bottom up." He feels that people's attitudes towards shoe shining need to change, and communicates the value of shoe shining through wide variety of activities. According to Hasegawa, "When your feet change, everything changes--you can tell a lot about who a person is from their shoes. It would be great if everyone felt the same way about shining their shoes before they leave the house as they do about brushing their teeth before they leave the house."

Hasegawa was 20 when he first entered the world of shoe shining. Finding himself without money, he got a job shining shoes for a daily wage on the street in front of Tokyo Station's Marunouchi exit. He bought a shoe shining set for five or six hundred yen at a discount shop and began selling shoe shines without knowing the first thing about it. Then one day, something a customer said spurred him to go see another bootblack in action--and Hasegawa was shocked to find that the shoes the man polished looked nothing like his own. It was then that he became truly fascinated by the world of shoe shining. Hasegawa worked at Marunouchi for a year, then moved to Shinagawa where he worked for three years. Finally, he opened Brift H in  July of last year--four years after he began shoe shining. He says that he's been able to continue shoe shining for so long because "when all is said and done, I enjoy it. To be able to take your own idea and turn it into something profitable--it really feels incredible!"

In addition to running Brift H, Hasegawa leads a busy life as he looks to foster business opportunities. Among his many activities are business trip and home delivery services for individuals or companies, shoe shining performances, and skills workshops. Asked for the secret of his success, he humbly responds, "I'm not there yet," before saying that good timing has been the biggest factor. He explains, "When I began shining shoes, the shoe shining business hadn't taken off yet. This never would have happened if there were tons of people doing the same thing. Trying to get involved in a business that's already well developed is no fun. More importantly, even though there's not yet a market for shoe shining, I wanted to try my hand at a job where there were few competitors. I was the only one. The idea itself pretty much came to me out of the blue, but there's been a logic to everything--in the sense that everything I've done is connected to what I want to be doing."

Hasegawa had dreams of opening his own business since he was a child, and his business has been greatly influenced by his customers--over half of whom are business owners or managers themselves. "I enjoy being able to meet different people and listen to what they have to say," Hasegawa says, "I feel enriched by it." Even if it's learning from those who set a bad example, Hasegawa says that speaking with his customers teaches him all kinds of things.

Brift H stays open until around ten at night, and many customers are businessmen on their way home from work or after-work socializing. The shop's strong supporters include all kinds of customers--from women working at nearby shops to foreign businessmen. When asked why he chose to set up Brift H as it is instead of at a busy hotel or in a busy street, Hasegawa replies, "I wanted to create a kind of lounge where customers could enjoy watching their shoes get cleaned--not a place where people were simply processed one after another.

Keiya Mizuno's book Yume o Kanaeru Zo (The Elephant That Makes Dreams Come True), which sold over a million copies in Japan last year, outlines the steps towards self-improvement and achieving success. The first step is: shine your shoes. According to Hasegawa, "because they are the part of us that gets the dirtiest, and because we must take care of them ourselves, our shoes are a reflection of who we are."

Why not start off 2009 with a shoeshine, and polish up yourself a bit in the process?