Masaki Bono, Pension Hayaokidori, Hakuba, Nagano

As you may well know if you visit our Forums, "gamera" is one of the popular Japanese regular posters over there.  But who is this mysterious creature?!  We spoke to gamera - whose name is Mr Masaki Bono.  In 1989 he decided to quit his banking job in the city and to follow his dream of opening up his own business in a snow village.  Here's his story of how he started his new business in Hakuba and tried to change with the times.

Over to you, gamera....

I was born in Osaka and lived there until I was 28 years old. I think I have been interested in the world outside of Japan since I was a kid. I remember my aunt giving me a globe as a present when I entered elementary school and I remember discovering some of the unique shapes of countries in the globe e.g. Italy looking like a boot! So I started to dream about traveling around the world someday.

In my music classes at elementary school, some words showed up as speed catchwords e.g. Andante, Fermata, Ritardando etc. which were totally new to me. My “sponge head” quickly learned those words and since then I’ve always been very interested in learning other languages. I often listened to English-language songs in my high school and university days while my friends were listening to J-pop. So usually I sang only English songs in karaoke because I really didn't know enough J-songs at that time!

After graduating from university, I worked for a bank in Osaka for just over four years.  I eventually retired from that job in 1988 after I had thought about my life and what I wanted to do with it.  I decided to open an inn in Hakuba when I was 28, and since then I have lived here in Hakuba playing with the snowblower every winter!

Anyway, going back a bit.... my major at university was commerce (especially foreign exchange) and I worked for a bank for four years after graduating from university.  I just felt it wasn’t what I really wanted to do forever - and also I was feeling too much stress at work. One day I almost felt dizzy while I walked around visiting customers, and sometimes it was getting almost impossible for me to keep awake. I thought seriously about what I was working for and for who…… the answer was for my life and myself!

I realized that life was too short (and we only have one!) and so I decided to try to do what I really wanted to do.  At that time the Japanese economy was still growing (before the "bubble crash") and so no-one except a few (one of my brothers and my mother) really respected my decision to retire from the bank because most people believed that banks would never become bankrupt and that it was a good job for life. But that was not my concern. I thought that history repeated itself and in the past some banks had become bankrupt. Some people also said something along the lines of "everyone has something to complain about and that's life, but they endure complaining - so why can't you?"

Though I retired from the bank I was still unsure what to do, so I had to think about earning some money to survive. I worked for a pizza delivery shop for some months and also did a few other things to earn money.  At that time I had not yet had the experiencing of living in the countryside, so I started to think about the changes that would be needed to live in the countryside.

It's always fun for me to experience new things and I made the decision to start running an inn here in Hakuba.  Hakuba doesn’t have a Shinkansen train connection, but it does have both a railway and some main routes that connect it to other places.  It is also reachable from big cities - including Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. If I had chosen a beachside, the peak season would probably be shorter than the mountainous area and that is one more reason why I chose Hakuba. Norikura also had avalanches and the roads were not available, so I thought I needed to hedge my risks as much as possible. Once my plan became clear, I needed to raise the funds together with my stock and savings. But with the experience of a banker, it was not so hard to do the extensive paperwork and finally I started my own business here in Hakuba in July 1989.

When I started in 1989, conditions were very good compared with recent years - we had many days fully booked in both the summer and winter. That situation continued for some years but after the Japanese economy "bubble crash", my business also became slower. But I needed to survive because this was my own choice and I needed to pay back some loans to a local bank, and this meant that I felt a lot of mental pressure.  But if you think about problems too seriously, you would probably look really tired and sick and I never want to give that impression to our customers, and so I made it a rule not to think about anything so seriously.  We just try to provide a comfy and cozy atmosphere for our guests to make themselves at home.

When the internet arrived as a method to advertise, I didn't spend time worrying about having English web site - I just did it soon after I learned that people could see websites from anywhere in the world if they have internet access. It was 1997 and only less than 10 properties in Hakuba had websites at that time (if I remember correctly). This also prompted me to start studying English again after a long interval of about 13 years without studying it at all. The next year - 1998 - we had some of the Nagano Winter Olympic competitions here in Hakuba and so we got some inquiries from abroad for room availability through our web site which guided us to target that market more through our website.

Unfortunately I have never lived or visited any English speaking countries, so I always progress little by little.  In this last couple of years, we have had some people come back to our place to stay from overseas which is really great - being an inn master, that is the most blissful feeling because it's not easy for them to come back here all the way from other countries…we hope this is an ongoing event.

I love Hakuba as a place to live - it’s peaceful, there is no pollution, full of nature and there are many onsens! You wake up when chickadees sing and woodpeckers peck. You make friends with squirrels and all sorts of small animals, and you can also find a lot of interesting places which are not listed in the guide books.  Interesting or boring though, it all really depends on how you spend your time here I guess. Probably a week is not enough to explore the entire Hakuba area, so I strongly recommend you to get longer time off from work!

When I registered myself at the Snow Japan Forums, I needed to choose a nickname and "Gamera" popped up in my mind so that's why I took it. I am not really a giant 80 ton, 60 meter tall green turtle, I don't spew fire, can't fly and I don't bite -- so please don't get scared off! 

See you on the Forums!

About working at a Japanese resort/hotel:
Japanese language skill is not a 'must' to work (at our place), but it helps when you speak with our Japanese guests and the other staff. A correct working visa is a must. Actually we have had some chances to talk with some people from abroad who wanted to work in our place in the past, but most of them disappear after talking about it for a while!  Perhaps they found somewhere else instead, or their working visas were not issued on time.

We prefer people who are communicative and easy to reach. Those who don't reply quick but need us to reply quick can never get our attention. And those who don't apply by him/herself (people want to apply with their friends) are often filtered.

You can often find gamera-san chatting away on the Snow Japan Forums.  Click here to view his Profile (you will need to be logged into the Forums to view this) - and click here to visit the main Snow Japan Forums page (for which you don't need to be logged in).

For more info on his Pension, visit the page on Snow Japan or the Pension Hayaokidori website.