In the foothills of Mount Asama, one of the most active volcanoes of Japan, jagged lava formations pulled the landscape – the remains of a 1783 outbreak, the villages swallowed and the country scarred permanently. A nearby park with a dark volcanic stone is called onioshidashia or radiating demons.
Nearby a crop of Winkelpolyeder performed last year and joined the lava deposits in this forested region, about 90 miles northwest of Central -Tokios. But these new objects arrived with skylights and saunas.
The area of Mount Asama, which calls a local tourism location “one of the best places in Japan for the threat of nature”, seems to be an unlikely place for a shop window of modern design. But these geometric holiday homes are the return of a trend that went out of fashion in the economic decline after the 1980s after the 1980s: Timeshares.
The 14 prefabricated Moss cabins, designed by the architect Kotaro for the Timesharing startup Sanu, have to offer a view of the surrounding forest of Japanese maple, Elm, Magnolia and Mizunara oak. Each cabin can accommodate four guests at a 516 square foot. The amenities include pellet stoves, wine cellars and in some cases private saunas and chargers with an electric vehicle. Apart from its unusual geometric design, the main attraction of the cabins can be your furniture, which are made exclusively from Japanese wood: cypresses, cedar and larch for the structures, cedar for the deck and the window frame and the chestnut for the beds.
In a short journey away, Sanus cluster of slightly larger cabins in the A-frame style are also cedar and other Japanese forests. Inspired by honeycombs, the bees -bungalows sleeping corners with two semi -leaves, which are framed by semicircular interior walls. There is a lot of light from large windows under the 13-foot ceilings, and some decks have wooden barrel saunas to warm up during the long winter.
This new generation of Timeshares attracts remote workers, co -owners and investors with its quirky forms, wasteful appointments and seducing environments, which range from bourgeois families to global celebrities. They offer a fractional owner system that is new to Japan – part of the realignment of a tourism and leisure industry, which has been shaken by the rise of hybrid work and an input of the incoming visitors in recent years.
“A cottage can be very expensive in Japan, but we can overcome this by sharing,” said Gen Fukushima, 38, the managing director of Sanu, who was in operation in 2021 with the Bee cabins. “We want to give people the chance to live and work in a natural environment.”
Sanu offers two basic services: subscribers can pay a monthly fee of 55,000 yen (approx. 370 USD) for up to seven nights at more than 30 locations in all of Japan. You can also buy shares of the real estate for 12 nights a year from around 4 million yen (27,000 US dollars), including the right, not used nights to sell back to the company.
“There is a growing trend to enjoy the stay yourself, like staying in a certain area and experiencing local life or integrating remote work into an environment surrounded by nature,” said Arata Kawamoto, 41, an engineer who worked in Tokyo, who became co -owner of Sanu. “This year I plan to load my family and friends into a fishing and stars.”
Timeshares were a popular concept in Japan's high -growth heyday and recently before the Yen lost about a third of his top value. The country's Timesharing market developed in the 1990s and early 2000s, which concentrated on high-rise buildings on the beach in Hawaii, which is operated by large hotel chains, as well as some domestic “resort clubs” that offered a similar experience (but usually without a kitchen). The latest decline in the Yen hit hard for the approximately 100,000 Japanese who own Timeshares in Hawaii. Many problems to sell their units due to the increasingly expensive fees in dollars.
Nevertheless, Yasushi said Asami, professor of urban technology at the University of Tokyo, said that the Japanese consumers are being warmed up to real estate that offers flexibility because the app-based sharing economy in Japan is gaining in traction. “With regard to the real estate market, it was previously popular to acquire Resort's owner apartments or villas, but lately there has been risks to own them,” said Asami. “I think Timesharing and accommodation types are becoming increasingly popular.”
Membership resort -Hotels, led by brands such as Tokyos Prince Hotels, expand their offers. The Hilton Grand Vacations based in Orlando, which runs almost 200 Timesharing resorts around the world, opens a complex with 63 units with a bedroom in Kyoto, the third in Japan.
At the other end of the spectrum there are smaller properties with a cultural heritage or high style. Some entrepreneurs use Japanese millions of abandoned houses or Akiya by transforming them into a common accommodation. Kessaku, a startup that was founded in 2024, wants to protect the risk of ruin or demolition risk by preserving it as a Timeshares. From 15 US dollars, investors can acquire ownership and use of these houses. With enough shares you can earn free nights or rent the property to others.
Kessaku currently has two properties: a 100-year dealer apartment in Yakage, Okayama Prefecture, with traditional Tatami mats, Shoji screens and fusuma sliding doors; And a farmhouse in the 19th century in the 19th century in the Nanto Prefecture in Nanto.
“I am very interested in architecture and inheritance and love the style and craftsmanship of traditional Japanese houses. So it is sad to recognize the loss of so many in the whole country,” said investor Nettah Yoeli-Rimmer, 40, a lecturer in Spanish literature and culture that is used at the University of Antwerp to recover its kessaku parts to recover, so Recovers his investments by hids to recover his Kessaku parts to use his investments by hids. “The Yakage ownership mentioned because of its location – relatively easily accessible by train, but off the stringing path.”
Then there is the high -end. Back in the Mount Asama region, a startup called not a hotel luxury accommodation such as Irori opened, a 2,684 square meter structure that sleeps eight and causes the clear lines of Frank Lloyd Wright. Its architect, Tessey Suma, centered the house, which was equipped with a glass wall, on his Irori stove, a dining room in traditional farmhouses. Wings lead to the bedrooms, a sauna with a view of a terrace and a garden and a bath fed by hot springs.
Irori is in a closed division with nine other no hotel properties, including the base L, a black structure in the A-frame style, which was designed by Yosuke Aizawa from white mountaineering and can sleep eight, over 1,700 square foot, a hot spring pool, a sauna and a private garden. These houses are designed in such a way that they fill a gap: in Japan there is not enough stylish properties in Japan with a legacy of high design in order to meet the needs of international visitors, said David Marx, a company spokesman.
Near a turntable in the base lounge are vinyl records of artists such as Bill Evans, Nina Simone and Takuya Kuroda, a jazz trumpeter. Two others who would really fit in are the singer Pharrell Williams and the record producer Nigo, both Louis Vuitton Designer and now no hotel investors and consultants.
One of the company's designers is the Norwegian company Snøhetta, which has only made a lodge of the mountain peaks accessible via ski lift or helicopter in the Rusutsu ski area. And Nigo, who serves as a designer, builds a cliff house with a view of the Tokyo Bay, in which guest guest pods in the hotel style and on the roof can be seen a 14-foot astronaut sculpture from stainless steel astronauts by the American artist Brian Donnelly, Aka Kaws.
From the cheap yen and the rising inbound tourism, no hotel, does not say a hotel that it has collected contracts worth $ 37.6 billion ($ 253 million) of almost $ 750 since its foundation in 2020. The company's founder and CEO allow Shinji Hamauzu to report.
“Many wealthy people are able to work everywhere today and they like to travel in a single place every year,” said Hamauzu. “Every time we expand our properties, we give the owners new places.”