Hospitality, tech, and business in Japan
Foreign investors can usually find a property in Japan faster than they can find a loan for it. Here's what financing options actually exist, and why cash still wins for smaller deals.
How 固定資産税 (fixed asset tax) works for short-term rental property owners in Japan, what it actually costs, and why it quietly wrecks headline yield numbers.
Japan's accommodation tax differs city by city — flat, banded, or percentage. Why we built japan-stay-tax, an open-source library to calculate it, and where it fits.
How fast guest message replies affect OTA ranking, reviews, and Superhost status for Japan short-term rental operators, and which questions to automate first.
A plain-English breakdown of Japan's 電子帳簿保存法 (e-bookkeeping law) for freelancers and sole proprietors: what counts as a digital receipt, storage rules, and searchability requirements.
A practical guide to staffing cleaning operations for multi-property short-term rentals in Japan — in-house vs outsourced, legal classification risks, and payment tracking.
OTA payouts and direct booking processors both quietly take a currency conversion cut before you see a yen. Here's where it hides and how to track it.
Why serious Niseko and Furano winter bookings lock in during summer, and how small Hokkaido operators should structure their ski-season pricing calendar.
Japanese contractor quotes (見積書) vary so widely in format that comparing totals alone misleads. Here's the 3-step normalization method and the tool we built.
How Japan STR operators handle early check-in and late check-out requests — pricing, policies, automation, and the cleaning window problem explained.