Industry Interview: Yasuko Nagase (Come on UP)

I’d always thought that if you put a whole bunch of interesting people together it would be a most entertaining occasion, so in the past I rented out bars and restaurants to hold events. Events end after one night without any continuity, however, and in searching for a different kind of way to do what I wanted to do I thought a share house would be interesting, and it started from there.

Yes, well I had lived in America for 8 years after I graduated from high school, so I had no aversion to a lifestyle living with others at all. I did think to myself that it was time for this kind of lifestyle to make its way to Japan, but I had a difficult time first explaining the concept to the landlord.

Yeah, we went through a lot in the beginning. (laughs) But all that comes with starting something new. At the time sharehouses were known as guest houses, and we wanted to treat residents not as guests, but to provide a home for individuals to live and spend time together, increasing the amount of places you could call ‘sharehouses.’

That’s right. There may be people who worry about trouble occurring when living with other people, but in my opinion that’s the great thing about sharehouses. No one is going to have the same set of values and everyone’s background and lifestyles are different, so I think it’s natural for things you don’t expect to happen and in the end you’ll learn how to deal with these differences.

Yeah, you come in contact with new ideas and it’s totally up to you how you react to them, but it’s something you can’t avoid in society so people should deal with it in their own way.

There’s a lot of things we try to do, but sharehouses are ultimately a connection of relationships among people, and we place great importance on that. Sharehouses aren’t all about great facilities in great locations, we at Come on Up want the people living in our houses to have a great time, too. We’re lucky to have a lot of fun people in our houses, and so many amazing things happen you never get sick of it. There are some celebrations going on at our Eifuku Nibankan house at the moment, for example! (laughs)

Well, not in the house (laughs). We have joint events with other sharehouses where people invite friends and everyone gets to know each other, so it happens that way I guess. Whenever we open a new house all of our existing tenants come to celebrate and everyone has a great time. And it’s great seeing the interaction, too.

Also, for our Eifuku-cho house, there was an entrepreneur in architecture and construction living in one of our houses who said he wanted to help with the design and layout, so we employed him to do it. Others helped out to complete it too, so this one means a lot to us.

He was a student so it wasn’t a great amount of money, and you come to want to support people that work so hard doing their best. As a manager it makes me happy to have that connection with everyone.

Of course I’m in business to make money, but I’m not just seeking profit, I want to look after the connections of the tenants, their friends and my staff, too.