"Platinum Family: A Peek into the Magnificent Family" (TV Asahi, Tuesdays at 7pm) is a program showcasing the lifestyles of "magnificent families." On October 7th, a three-hour special will air. MC Chisako Takashima will travel to Paris and Cambridge, England, to visit Japanese people living in a world far beyond our imagination.
In Cambridge, Takashima will visit the home of Kiyomi Hashimoto, a businessman whom she met through her husband's best friend. The house is spacious and has a magnificent gate, with land the size of approximately eight Tokyo Domes. The building is a manor house (an aristocratic residence) built in the 17th century, and is considered to have great historical value in the UK. Kiyomi apparently purchased it 10 years ago for several billion yen.
The stately entrance hall is decorated with paintings and artificial flower arrangements by Hiroko Takeda, a world-renowned flower artist and great-great-granddaughter of Emperor Meiji. Everything about the home is out of the ordinary, with separate dining rooms for dinner and breakfast, three large kitchens, and ten guest rooms. Takashima is surprised, saying, "It's hard to believe this is someone else's home; it's like a museum."
The grounds, with their rivers, bridges, fields and greenhouses, are so vast that Kiyomi himself says he has never been around them all. Kiyomi, who lives in this mansion, is the CEO of the sake maker Dojima Sake Brewery. He originally produced beer in Takatsuki City, Osaka Prefecture, but in 1999 received an offer from the Myanmar government to work at a local brewery. While raising six young children, he expanded his business in Myanmar and achieved great success, and used that capital to establish the first brewery in the UK as a Japanese sake maker. The program also delves into Kiyomi's sales strategy.
In France, the program follows Miki de Maistre, a Japanese woman who married into a count's family, and also meets the descendants of Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower.
