POWDERLIFE (PL):
When did you start to think about moving on to J-Sekka?

SHOUYA GRIGG (SG):
Well we were doing Sekka for about three years, and it was almost like my living room because we lived upstairs. Our home was still in Sapporo and we’d just come out to run Sekka in the winter. Through meeting people in the restaurant I would get chatting and selling them some wine, or maybe they were interested in interiors, or they’d say they were looking for some land and talk about what they wanted to do. That’s how I started moving on to other projects. I got a couple of partners and we ended up deciding to buy the old J-Second Hotel, renovating it and calling it J-Sekka. We had accommodation as well as the F&B and different outlets and that’s when I moved Sekka, the dining and the bar, over to J-Sekka and closed the original.

We had more space so I had to come up with some different ideas to fill it. I wanted to have an accommodation element as well.

PL:
Why the interest in accommodation as well?

SG:
With accommodation, rather than just having people for dinner, you can embrace them more and for longer. It’s a longer conversation and a deeper relationship, and it enabled us to have the delicatessen and do the breakfast thing for them as well.

PL:
So it seems that you like designing experiences as much as the actual spaces?

SG:
That’s a good way of putting it. Dinner is only a small part of the whole experience. When you’ve got people staying you can really create a much deeper and bigger experience with them. The whole thing of checking in and staying in the room and coming down for a drink and dinner.

“That’s when I started to focus on something bigger and better. All of these were stepping stones in my education and learning process.”

PL:
So that was your second big project. Again, were you happy with the way that turned out?

SG:
In the beginning, very happy when we were running everything. But after a couple of years I started to do other projects. For a long time I had wanted to do a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn), like a retreat. But the original Niseko just wasn’t big enough and I didn’t have enough experience or money.

With J-Sekka obviously being a bigger building, it enabled me to have a go at the whole thing with some accommodation, even though we didn’t really run it as a hotel where people come and stay for one night. It was more like a condominium within the building.

So it still wasn’t quite what I was really wanting to do but it was a good stepping stone. Through it I learned a lot as well. Then as I did start to do other projects I was starting to plan the ryokan retreat.

I had some different land and I was staying in different properties throughout Japan and seeing what type of market was coming to Niseko – obviously it was changing constantly. So that was always in the back of my mind and I was working on that on the sidelines. I became a little bit more hands off with J-Sekka.

We rented out some of the spaces which made it easier but it compromised the integrity of the original plan.

That’s when I started to focus on something bigger and better. All of these are stepping stones in my education and learning process.

POWDERLIFE (PL):
So when did the seed get planted for Zaborin?

SHOUYA GRIGG (SG):
From way back to be honest. From a long time ago even before I came to Japan I used to enjoy staying at little retreats or unique properties. After coming to Japan my wife and I often stayed at different ryokans, which are like retreats. Not all high end, often just cheap, little family-run businesses. Some were good, some were bad. It’s subjective but even the good ones I still found there were certain things I would probably do differently because of the way I like things. There are people who seem to like my style or like that I’ve got a different take on things.

I think my wife got sick of hearing me say all these things and kept saying “you’ve got to do your own place”. From when I had my media design company in Sapporo I had a few hotels as clients. So I had this behind-the-scenes look into hotels and ryokans, photographing them and doing their promotional materials. This enabled me to fine-tune my focus.

Location is obviously important and I had some good land from a long time ago. It was just a case of gradually planning it in my mind. I built my house on a different part of the same land about nine years ago, so I was able to live there and really get to know it. Living with the land for such a long time, being able to walk over it, experience the seasons, to live and breathe and feel it, is really important for my process of creating and designing. Most people don’t have the luxury of spending such a long time on a piece of land before they do something.

PL:
So you were living on your land and walking around it for 10 years, and the whole time you were noticing what happens in different seasons, and where the sun rises and sets. So I suppose you were coming up with ideas the whole time about which direction you would face things and where you could have different features?

SG:
That’s right. Even the number of rooms – I always knew it would be a small number of rooms. But every year we would go stay somewhere else and pick up something interesting and I just kept refining my ideas until I got to the stage where basically I had all the ideas, I had the land, I had the contacts to make it happen. I just needed finance and fortunately I was able to speak to some investors who I had produced a property for in Hirafu. They liked my style and ideas, and they agreed to come on board and make it happen.

PL:
We’ve been talking about you designing experiences, so what was your vision and what was the experience you wanted to create with Zaborin?

SG:
The thing with Zaborin is it’s designed mainly for the Japanese market. I felt that in Japan and within Hokkaido there was still room for a high-end ryokan that could appeal to the Japanese market. A lot of them were good but there were still things missing. The Japanese often play it very safe with ryokans – I wanted to do something a little bit fresh. I also wanted to to show them some of the materials we used, or some of the found
objects that I used for art on the walls as a bit of a statement that everything doesn’t need to be shiny and polished. I was wanting to show that maybe that’s the old way of thinking, and you can do something a lot simpler and maybe more authentic.

PL:
So you’re designing a Japanese style ryokan as a foreigner for Japanese people. I guess it’s an outsider’s take on their traditions. How have Japanese people reacted to it?

SG:
Well I didn’t want to go upsetting anybody but I didn’t want to just play it safe. We didn’t want to make a big point that this is owned by foreigners or that I was very involved in the design. I think being a foreigner there are things I can get away with in Japan, because I’m not expected to do it a certain way. So I had artistic freedom that some Japanese don’t have.

PL:
How does Zaborin differ from a traditional ryokan?

SG:
It basically comes down to the mindset of the owners. My partners and I have had much experience living and travelling both internationally and throughout Japan and being non-Japanese this enables us to look at things differently to other ryokan owners.

The key elements of our differences come down to choice of location, materials used for the build and interior, food concept and our style of hospitality.

Also, I feel that our take on ‘luxury’ is refreshing for many guests, it’s much more about creating simple authentic experiences than just high thread counts and quality amenities.

Living with the land for such a long time, being able to walk over it, experience the seasons, to live and breathe and feel it, is really important for my process of creating and designing something.

POWDERLIFE (PL):
This is now the coolest thing in Niseko. Tell us all about it!

SHOUYA GRIGG (SG) :
I bought a kominka from down south, got it taken apart piece by piece, shipped up here and I’ve rebuilt it on one corner of my land. Zaborin’s on one side, near our house, and then on the other side the land drops off into a valley with a beautiful river running through it. We’ve built literally on the cliff so it looks down over the river and back up to the mountains. It’s an amazing location.

I’ve dug into the cliff and built a semi-basement underneath, so you don’t actually know it’s there when you approach the building. When you go through the old house and drop down the stairs, you come into a big gallery, workshop and seminar space, which is all glass on the valley side.

Then back on the ground level, one of the other projects I’ve been thinking about for a long time is a crafts gallery and shop – ceramics and glass and metal, just beautiful pieces that we pick up from around Japan and Hokkaido.

The other half of the building is a café and restaurant, and upstairs under the big roof we’ve got a private Japanese tea room. It’s a really fascinating space.

PL:
What sort of dining experience will it be?

SG:
I’ve got an amazing couple from Sapporo who will be running it – a 34-year old chef and his partner who owns a business sourcing incredible food and organic produce. Things like amazing salts and vinegars and seaweed and miso, and all these fantastic products that have got stories behind them and the people who make them. She introduces a lot of these things to him and they work together. They’ve been wanting to move to the countryside so they’re behind the food, and I’ll be involved as well choosing the ceramics and plates and other things we use.

In these old houses the ground in the main area was called the doma and was all soil. On one side would be where your horse lives, and then on the other side, the floor rises up and you would have the tatami living areas and an irori (charcoal fire pit). Above that are massive beams but otherwise it’s open all the way to the roof. I’ve got a massive old 3m-round wooden table that can seat about 12 people and I’ll put that in the middle of the room. I’m thinking about doing a chef’s table where it’s just one group dining, just you and your friends or family.

PL:
What’s the meaning behind the name?

SG: The name Somoza comes from the first two letters from each of our three kids’ names. But the deeper meaning behind that is, I believe you should surround yourself with things you like, the things you love, because when you do that your quality of life improves.

The other way of looking at it is you’re a product of your environment. That doesn’t mean that you’ve got to go out and buy expensive furniture and things. It can be just some found objects or some cheap things that you pick up somewhere. It’s more about making a choice, like choosing things a little bit more carefully. Something that speaks to you rather than something that doesn’t really have any meaning.

I think what’s important is the people you surround yourself with, the objects, the things you use in the kitchen, the ceramics you have your meal from, furniture, books. These things make a difference to your life – I’ve experienced it first hand, I’ve heard it from other people and read about it.

By creating this interesting space I want to introduce that concept to other people.

Somoza’s gallery is open this winter, featuring an exhibition of Shouya’s Hokkaido winter photographs including the one pictured here on byobu (panelled Japanese paper screen canvasses). See Somoza.jp for details.

POWDERLIFE (PL):
So now that Somoza is almost finished, what have you got in store for us now?

SHOUYA GRIGG (SG):
Just down from the station on the main street of Kutchan I’ve got a nice, old stone warehouse. It’s a big space – 700sqm – and I’ve had that for a few years, just using it as storage, but I’ve been working on plans for it.

Now that Zaborin is up and running I’ve got some interesting plans for this space. I’m looking at doing a mixture of a very nice café, wine bar, restaurant and accommodation – probably just five or six studios short or even medium-term stays.

Again it’d incorporate another little gallery and a small function space. There’ll be a little shop down there, which will be an extension of the one we’re doing up here (in Somoza). It’s downtown, so it’s just a bit of a fun space. It’s under the Sekka brand so it’s an extension of what I’ve been doing over the years.

It won’t be super high end. It’s going to be more like the Ace Hotels in the US and London – a small, funky hotel that’s not super cheap, not super expensive, but it’s just got a good vibe and interesting design using local and found objects and things. Often their lobbies are very well known for hanging out because it’s not just the guests, but people from the community go there and hang out because it has great coffee or is a good place for a drink.

There’s a fantastic piece of land alongside it that I also own and what I’ll probably do there is put some railway sleepers down like a solid terrace, then open up the building so in the green season it will become a nice al fresco café area where you can sit outside.

I’ve always liked that concept so it’s going to be fun and it’s also breaking new ground for Kutchan.