Aiming to create a hotel where guests and the community can meet
A unique vehicle called the BAR horse-drawn carriage BAR runs through the city center of Obihiro, Hokkaido. The departure and arrival point is in front of a hotel that opened in 2016 called HOTEL NUPKA. While waiting, some visitors are drinking craft beer at Nupka and seem to be looking forward to the attraction that is about to begin.
The Nupuka is one of the projects started by Tetsuya Kashiwao, a lawyer from Obihiro City who lives in Tokyo. Kashiwao’s family used to run an optician’s store in downtown Obihiro. However, since the 1980s, with the shift to an automobile-oriented society, customers have been leaving the city center, and Mr. Kashiwao has seen his family’s business grow stagnant. After graduating from high school in 1985, Mr. Kashiwao entered Kyoto University, worked outside of Hokkaido, qualified as a lawyer, and lived in Tokyo. However, around the time he turned 40 (in 2006), he began to feel that something could be done to help his hometown in its current state of desolation, and he decided that fulfilling this desire would be his life’s work in the latter half of his life, so he began his activities.
Kashiwao first joined a community in Tokyo called the “Tokachi Tokyo Club” because he had been away from his hometown for more than 20 years and had no personal connections. At that meeting, he met Kotomi Sakaguchi, who later became a co-founder of Nupuka. She, too, had a desire to do something about the declining situation in her hometown of Obihiro.
Mr. Kashiwao first read a book about Portland, U.S.A., called “Green Neighborhood” in 2010, and was so impressed that he actually went to Portland to get a concrete idea of how to revitalize the city. Through the combined efforts of the private sector, residents, and government, Portland has transformed a desolate warehouse district into one of the most attractive cities in the United States*, and has become a model for urban development in other parts of the world.
After returning to Obihiro, Mr. Kashiwao first set out to convey the charms of Tokachi to the rest of the world in order to capitalize on Obihiro’s high potential to take advantage of economic development in Asia. As part of this effort, he produced a film called “My Little Guidebook” and distributed it on video sharing sites. In addition to his own investment, he has raised over 2 million yen through crowdfunding.
Ranked No. 8 in the U.S. in “Best Places to Live in the U.S. in 2022-2023” by U.S. News.
Aiming to create a hotel where guests and the community can meet
While walking the streets of Obihiro for a film shoot, Mr. Kashiwao found a vacant hotel. Recalling the view of the Ace Hotel, where he had stayed in Portland, as a base for urban development, he made the bold decision to purchase it. That is the current Nupuka building.
When we purchased the building, Obihiro City approached us and introduced us to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s subsidy for the central city revitalization project,” Kashiwao said. The grant was divided into two phases, a research project and a construction project. The research project was adopted first, and with the cooperation of Ryohei Suita, author of “Green Neighborhood,” and others, a report of nearly 100 pages was compiled. This became the theoretical basis for the idea of creating a town from a hotel through interaction between guests and the local community.
The report was also adopted as the basis for a building project based on the research, and the contents of the report were incorporated into the design. The design was commissioned to Tokyo-based UDS Inc. They manage their own inns, and we sympathized with their practice of not only design but also management based on income and expenditure calculations,” Kashiwao continued.
Mr. Kashiwao said he was often told that Nupuka’s design was aggressive. In order to keep the room to an area of 8m2 including toilet and shower, the room is like a bed only. Based on accommodation needs and design, the rooms are boldly compact and make effective use of space.
During Nupuka’s construction period, in the summer of 2015, there was a time when the entire old interior was stripped out, giving it the appearance of a ruin. At that time, the space was opened to artists, with a solo exhibition by a local artist and a collaborative exhibition by about 50 contemporary artists. The works Kashiwao purchased from those artists are still on display near the entrance to Nupuka. Other works by local creators are also lined up in the Nupuka building.
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Nupuca opened in March of 2016, but attracting guests to a small hotel originating from the region was not easy, and the hotel struggled at first. Then, when travel demand increased during Golden Week, Nupuka received an influx of travelers who had been turned away because other hotels were fully booked. Their word-of-mouth reviews were very positive. The hotel was highly rated by word of mouth, and we were able to create a lively atmosphere during the full-fledged summer tourist season,” says Kashiwao.
With the hotel as a base, the entire community, including the surrounding restaurants, joined the “Japan Machiyado Association” in 2018, based on the idea of providing hospitality to guests. In addition, the hotel rented a room in an old commercial building in the neighborhood as a coworking space for guests. We asked a local artist to produce the interior design. It has a retro atmosphere, and it has been well received by our guests,” Kashiwao says happily.
When the operation got on track, he was looking at properties in the neighborhood to develop a larger room that could accommodate families in addition to the compact rooms he had been using. Then, in November 2019, Mr. Kashiwao received a phone call from the head office of Dai-ichi Life Insurance Co. The company wanted to collaborate with a local business to make use of real estate that could contribute to the community. It was a perfect match, and Mr. Kashiwao proposed the use of the property as a hotel facility. The three parties, including the city of Obihiro, discussed and finalized a plan to use the facility, but the Corona disaster struck and the project was temporarily cancelled.
However, in July 2020, the government’s Tourism Strategy Implementation Council announced a policy to promote work vacations as a “new style of travel,” and the project was resumed with a plan to use the Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance building as a work stay facility. The building, also designed by UDS, will open the following April 2021 as “NUPKA Hanare. The first floor of the building will be the Hanare LOUNGE, which will offer three private booths for online meetings to all guests free of charge, while the second and third floors will be a hotel facility that can accommodate business stays and families in comfort. A work facility connected to the city has been created.
Custom-built horse-drawn carriage BAR creates a new night scene
On the first floor of Nupuka is a café and bar where visitors can experience the culinary charms of Tokachi. Mr. Sakaguchi, co-founder and general manager of Nupuka, is taking the lead in creating a menu and holding events to bring out Nupuka’s unique character. Mr. Sakaguchi already has experience in opening many restaurants in Tokyo and has managed a cafe in Sendagi himself. Utilizing the wide network of contacts he has cultivated, many people have visited Nupuka, spreading the image that it is more than just an accommodation facility.
One of its unique colors is the bar on the first floor, which offers 12 different craft beers on tap. Moreover, one of them is the original “Beer for the Beginning of the Journey,” made by Nupuka from barley grown by local farmers. Kashiwao’s approach to craft beer is based on his visit to Portland. In Portland, microbreweries are thriving and there are as many as 60 breweries. According to Mr. Kashiwao, “We wanted to make our own beer for our hotel guests to drink, so we started the beer-making project in conjunction with hotel construction. We started a new beer project together with the hotel,” Kashiwao continues, “using Tokachi barley as the ingredient and commissioning our own recipe.
The beer is now available at Shinkansen platforms in Tokyo, Shinagawa, and Ueno stations, and has become a symbol of “the beginning of the journey” in Japan. The beer will be sold on Shinkansen platforms at Tokyo, Shinagawa, and Ueno stations from 2022.
The horse-drawn carriage BAR, which began operating in 2019, is also becoming one of Obihiro’s most popular content. The horse-drawn carriage BAR starts and ends in Nupuka, where participants ride a horse-drawn carriage through Obihiro at night, covering a distance of about 2 kilometers in about 50 minutes. A set of drinks and snacks is included, and participants can enjoy the scenery while sipping their drinks.
The organizer of the horse-drawn carriage bar is Tsuyoshi Nagata, who moved from Tokyo and came up with the idea to make Tokachi’s horse culture a tourism resource,” says Kashiwao. Initially, the plan was to simply provide the location in front of Nupuka to Mr. Nagata, but in order to solve the issues of business operations such as operation reception and cooking, and fundraising, Nupuka established a new horse culture business division, and Mr. Nagata joined this division to start the business. The horse-drawn carriage BAR has become a new town scenery, and its name recognition has increased dramatically through its approximately four years of operation. Mr. Kashiwao feels that it is now one of Obihiro’s representative nighttime contents and has become a highlight of the city’s tourism.
