and stage objects were displayed in the café. Gazio ceased operations as an active restaurant in 2015 and rebranded as an art studio; Yūichi now holds twice monthly "Café Gazio" events in Kichijōji. Their father, , was a firefighter as well as a calligrapher: Under the penname , he wrote the names of album and band for the cover art of the P-Model album Potpourri. Since childhood, Hirasawa showed a love for machines, and thought of himself as an engineer. He was a RC plane enthusiast (at one point in time wanting to be a pilot) and repaired broken devices (such as radios and flashlights) given to him by his parents. He studied in the electronics department of , where he was the first to finish the graduation project, the construction of a TV, out of sheer luck, since he did not fully understand the circuits. He also had motocross as a hobby for a time. He enrolled in the in 1972 and graduated cum laude in 1975 from the university's interior design course. According to the Tokyo Designers' Gakuin College '75 Design Annual, his graduation project was a dome-shaped stage set hall for Tangerine Dream shows. During the early days of Mandrake, he worked as a part-time carrier on a fruits and vegetables market during the morning and at a Pepsi warehouse during the night, alongside Mandrake co-founder Fumiyasu Abe. In 1978, Hirasawa applied for a part-time lecturer position at Yamaha Music Foundation, and since he was the only person that applied for that position, he got the job. He taught courses at the Yamaha Synthesizer School until 1983, and met various musicians that he would later collaborate with through these lectures. After leaving his position as teacher, he took to making commercial jingle for the rest of the decade to make ends meet. Hirasawa started smoking in 1979 and quit in 2001; he has since become an avid vaper. He's also a teetotaler, since drinking anything larger than a fifth of a cup of beer makes him feel like his head is exploding. Regardless of that, he used to drink small amounts of wine during recording sessions to preserve his voice, which he's since replaced with throat lozenges. Hirasawa has spoken out in favor of the Big Pharma conspiracy theory. He has been known to promote the usage of alternative medicine, including the widely discredited Miracle Mineral Solution,