Mako Hattori, 47, a well known TV personality and traditional Japanese dance instructor, recalls growing up in Nihonbashi. "I started working when I was 15 because I wanted to help my mom, who was a single mother raising me and my younger brother," she says in fluent English. "She was working as a geisha in a restaurant, making barely enough to support the three of us. I never saw her buy things for herself".