About HAKATAYA

I know what it's like to start over in another country

At 18, I left Japan for Australia. For the next five years I studied, worked, and lived in a language that wasn't my own, graduating from Griffith University. Simple things like opening a bank account, understanding a contract, or explaining myself to an official took twice the effort.

That experience never left me. When I meet foreign founders in Japan today, I recognise the same situation: capable people, slowed down not by their ideas but by an unfamiliar system.

Japan needs founders from abroad

After returning to Japan, I began my career at an accounting firm, handling everything from daily bookkeeping to monthly closing, tax filings, and reporting financial results to management.

I then joined the launch of a new service business, where I was responsible not only for finance and accounting, but also for HR, administration, and sales. Building a company from zero taught me what founders really face: every decision comes back to cash flow.

In 2017, I founded HAKATAYA. Since then, I have worked as the outsourced finance team for startups and small businesses, including service and restaurant businesses: bookkeeping, monthly and annual closing, cash-flow management, and budgeting.

Over those years, I became convinced of one thing: Japan needs more competition and fresh ideas from outside. Foreign entrepreneurs bring new products, new ways of working, and new energy to local economies. Yet many never get off the ground, because Japanese banks, documents, and procedures are hard to navigate from the outside.

I founded HAKATAYA to change that: to give foreign founders a partner who understands both how Japanese lenders think and what it feels like to build a business far from home.

What I enjoy most

People sometimes ask me what the most rewarding part of my work is. It's not a dramatic moment. It's the moment a founder's numbers become clear: when scattered receipts and bank statements turn into a business plan a lender can trust, and when bookkeeping runs almost in real time, so the founder always knows where the business stands.

Clear numbers give founders confidence. They make lenders say yes. And they let founders focus on what they came to Japan to do: build their business.