PACIFIC RIM TRADE : Profiles : Millions of Engines Rev Up the Asian Economy : To start a family. To start a business. To travel. Such goals help make individual workers productive. : SHINJI KIKUCHI, 36, <i> Tokyo salesclerk </i>

Beatles classics boomed over the stereo system at Shop & Shop Marukin as Shinji Kikuchi explained why he enjoys his job selling American T-shirts, sports shoes and other imported casual wear.

“From my childhood, I didn’t like the idea of working from 9 to 5 wearing a tie,” said Kikuchi, 36, bearded, long-haired and wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt.

“I saw how my father worked as an ordinary company employee, and I didn’t think it would fit for me. . . . I liked this kind of atmosphere since my junior high school days. Because I have a lot of contact with young people in this job, I feel like I can keep myself young too.”

Not too worried about career-building, Kikuchi has held a string of jobs since high school, mostly as a salesclerk. This has left him the flexibility to make half a dozen trips to Hawaii and San Francisco.

He is a “big fan” of the Grateful Dead and likes San Francisco partly for its music scene, he said. He is single, earns about $32,000 a year and spends one-quarter of his income to rent a one-room apartment.

The shop where Kikuchi works is one of dozens of stores, selling everything from Italian suits to American candy bars, crammed into the Ameyoko Center in Tokyo’s bustling Okachimachi district.

Ameyoko was a multinational center specializing in food and U.S. Army surplus goods in the early post-World War II years. After a fire years ago, it was rebuilt to house trendy import shops.

Overseas travel has made more people realize that foreign goods are usually sold at huge markups in Japan, and this knowledge, combined with the strength of the yen, is beginning to help push prices down, Kikuchi said.

“However much our salaries are large in U.S. dollars,” he said, “in real life you don’t feel that things are cheap.”