When did you first discover artist Taiyo Matsumoto's "Tekkonkinkreet" manga?

I was staying with a Japanese friend of mine when I first saw Matsumoto-san's manga. Keep in mind that I'm not someone who is an otaku (obsessive fan) at all. I don't really read manga much, even today. I just had some time on my hands and I was looking for something to check out. My friend, who knows my tastes very well, suggested I might like it. He pulled out this three-book version of "Tekkonkinkreet" and said "nakeru yo," which means something in Japanese like "keep a box of tissues handy." It was probably 1995, right around the time of the sarin gas attacks and the Kobe earthquake. There were these black helicopters buzzing around and you could turn on the TV and see people getting stabbed in real time. It was a really weird time to be in Japan. Also, around the same time, one of my favorite places in Tokyo turned into this construction site overnight. It was this old ivy-covered apartment building in Daikanyama that had been developed in postwar Japan, but had since become this beautiful and idyllic sort of place with a bathhouse and a dining hall. Eventually, it wound up turning into a Roppongi Hills-style development. While all this was going on, here I was reading this manga about these two kids, named Kuro ("Black") and Shiro ("White"), and how they managed to adapt, or not adapt, to this world that's constantly shifting and changing around them. At first it's just them and the local neighborhood gangsters, but then there's this extraterrestrial real-estate developer, who tries to turn the city into an amusement park, and he's working for yet another higher authority. . . . It was crazy but it all felt very real. It wasn't such a stretch from what I was feeling at the time, which was "is there any solid ground here?" I was looking for something to hold onto, and this manga really spoke to me, and it continued to. And I could see from the beginning how it could be made into a really cool movie. It had an amazing setting -- a very dramatic multilayered story. It felt very cinematic.

Which places helped inspire the imaginary city of Takara Machi, where the film takes place?