About TMH.

TMH. at dusk

On March 20 around 21:30 I saw the property lease listing. I had to rub my eyes, because it was for an impossibly good location on the path that virtually every visitor to Mt. Takao walks from Takaosanguchi Station to the Takao Tozan Railway cable car or the main trailheads. Before covid, “every visitor” meant around 3 million people annually. The partners who had already done the design and contracting to renovate hydda Takao were ready to immediately renovate this lease property and we had a solid business model in mind. But first I had to secure the property—there would no doubt be an overwhelming number of inquiries by other parties also desperate to lease it.

The next morning I called the real estate company with the listing. They were located in Tsukishima, a somewhat more old-school and urban part of Tokyo that is very different from Takao. Having downloaded the property title, I could see that the property had been purchased by a person in Minato the previous year, from the daughter of the family that used to live in the house on the property. The man who answered the phone was soft-spoken and polite and agreed to meet me right away.

I quickly explained that I ran a small real estate brokerage and went over our general idea for the property: To renovate the house of circa-1990 vintage standing on the land into a rental showroom space and takeout cafe stand that would serve craft beer and good coffee and food like sandwiches. When a fellow real estate brokerage calls on a lease listing that has been released to the general public, they are often cautious. He said that we would have to pay the same brokerage fees as anyone. Of course that was fine by me—my worry in turn was that my foreign name might cause concern, hence the appeal to our being a brokerage. Casting aside subtlety I stated outright that I would do whatever was necessary to be first in line to lease the property. He gave me what assurances he could. They were not assuring to me because this location was too good to be true or count on getting until one had it. We agreed to meet the next day.

When I arrived the same soft-spoken man was waiting. He was a handsome, sportsman-looking, affable man in his 50s. We had a great chat. His good news for me was that we were first in line. The owner liked our idea for the property more than the other 40 or so inquiries that had been lighting up his phone since the day before. The bad news was that in light of that response, they wanted to raise the monthly rate another 50,000 yen. Frankly, we would have accepted an increase of thrice that. I said yes and my company immediately leased the property by putting down the 4 million yen or so needed to cover a few months’ rent, deposits, and so on.

With covid having cleaned out my company coffers for the preceding two-and-a-half years, this was not a small investment. The owner kindly accepted our request to waive rent during some of the renovation—through July—and had no qualms about our gutting the house. One catch in the lease was that he would only go as far as four years on the length of lease. This meant that any financing we might arrange would only assume we had the property for that four years, so the credit available was limited.

In the meantime, my architect partners were finalizing the design as the fourth partner in the venture, a creative and branding expert, was guiding the visual and branding side of things. I was working with the surrounding community, which had virtually never had a brand new establishment appear in their very closed-off shopping street association. We needed to be open before the peak fall season, when over half of annual visitors come to see the changing leaves.

By late spring the design was complete and contractors were lined up to do a lot of the work. We needed to do most of the interior demolition to save money, so the summer included a lot of sweat and crowbars and bruised hands. Demolition professionals removed the garden and all the debris we had produced. A concrete floor was poured. A lithe steel staircase replaced the chunky wood one. We went to the mountains of far western Tokyo to stain cypress boards that had been grown nearby. A foundation was poured for the terrace. The carpenters came and built the terrace. We borrowed what we could and paid the contractors and bought the refrigerators and fryer and espresso machine and craft beer taps.

Thanks to all of us getting very busy and stressed out, everything came together for a pre-opening on September 29 and a full opening on October 1. Small tasks were still being completed after that, such as my installing security cameras. For the first time. Of course.

The response has been very good. Customers were waiting for this kind of place at Mt. Takao, and because we are offering something no one else has, we aren’t taking anyone’s, say, Japanese confectionary customers.

In July we incorporated andSCAPES GK, a partnership of the four of us, to run TMH. (TAKAO MOUNTAIN HOUSE), and also to develop further properties with the overarching aim of creating a fumoto (mountain base) culture of not only hiking and trail running, but also stopping to relax and enjoy the fresh air and atmosphere of communities at the bases of mountains.

Our next property should be secured by the end of this year, and renovations begun in Spring. It will be a larger building and this time address another unmet need in the Mt. Takao area: Office space where company employees can work while enjoying the natural surroundings only available near mountains. A lot of companies have already inquired about such space, so we will renovate an existing building to have first-floor restaurant space and second- and third-floor office space. This will not only meet the need for these kinds of office space, but also provide a population of people that comes to Takao even on rainy days and during the slow winter months, unlike the majority of existing visitors. This will bring diversity and stability to what has been a purely tourist economy. I will share more on that project soon.