Ray Hoe is betting on the small Japanese town of Toyama for his first hotel project

For some Singaporeans who make money in the stock market, a second property is the next move. Ray Hoe did too—just not one here.

The 41-year-old channelled his gains into a 77-year-old ryokan in Toyama, a small city on the Sea of Japan coast that most tourists pass through on the Shinkansen without stopping.

He had no hospitality experience, didn’t and still doesn’t speak Japanese, and had never visited Toyama before the property caught his eye. 

Four years and a seven-figure investment later, Hooray Toyama, a boutique modern ryokan (traditional Japanese inn featuring tatami-matted rooms), is preparing to open its doors in Sept 2026.

An early interest in hospitality

Ray has lived in Singapore all his life. He grew up watching his parents draw other people’s buildings—both were draftsmen, the people who translate an architect’s vision into technical drawings. 

His father later became a small property developer in Malaysia. At the same time, his mother worked in the drafting studio of an architect who later founded Banyan Tree Hotels.

His parents’ work gave Ray an early interest in hospitality and property. Ray went on to study at the University of British Columbia before returning to Singapore to start his career at commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle, where he spent years selling international properties in London, Tokyo, and New York to Singaporean buyers. 

Along the way, he kept meeting a certain type of developer, the ones who were doing hospitality projects rather than residential ones.

“They were the coolest people. Most generous, most fun, most artsy,” he said. “I thought: one day I want to be a hotelier like them.”

That opportunity came 15 years later. Ray made money in the stock market when COVID-19 hit and had to decide what to do with the gains.

With time on his hands during the pandemic, he began researching hotels in Japan online, looking for a way to finally pursue his long-held ambition of becoming a hotel operator.

Why Toyama?

Ray knew from the start he didn’t want a hotel in Kyoto, Osaka or Tokyo. 

What he wanted was a Japan that most visitors don’t see—not metropolitanism, but nature and culture and food and the particular quietness of a place that hasn’t been overrun by tourism.

That led him to the Hokuriku region, which stretches along Japan’s northwestern coast and includes Toyama, Ishikawa, and Fukui.

Toyama, in particular, stood out for several reasons. One was the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, which Ray describes as the Japanese Alps in a compact, stunning setting and what he considers the best hiking experience in Japan.

The second appeal is the food. Having visited Japan many times—and even lived there for a year for a previous job—Ray had developed a particular appreciation for the seafood in the region.

“Every time I come back from Toyama, I find that the sushi in Osaka and Tokyo doesn’t match up to the freshness in the Hokuriku region,” he said. 

The cold, clean waters of the Sea of Japan feed some of the finest seafood in the country, a fact well known to Japanese food lovers and almost unknown to international tourists.

The third reason was a calculated bet, and Ray was ready to ride the wave.

In 2025, Japan’s government has set a target of 60 million inbound visitors by 2030 — roughly double the 36 million who came in 2024. 

A significant part of that plan depends on spreading visitors beyond the crowded major cities into regional destinations, and it can be said that Toyama is exactly the kind of place that policy is designed to promote.

“More people will be willing to go deeper into Japan rather than seeing the same things,” Ray said. “And I thought: why not? Let’s try Toyama.”

The ryokan has been around for 77 years

The property Ray acquired has a relatively long history of its own. 

Built 77 years ago, Hooray Toyama has passed through three generations of the same family. A grandmother founded it, and the third-generation owner invested millions in renovation before reopening in 2019, right before the pandemic closed the country.

Unable to survive two years of virtually zero tourism, the property went to auction in 2024.

Ray wasn’t the only one looking at it. He had actually spotted it earlier, but lost it to another bidder. 

Assuming the opportunity was gone, he turned his attention elsewhere. He bought a small piece of land along the Shimanami Kaidō cycling route in Hiroshima, overlooking the Seto Inland Sea.

A year later, the winning bidder decided to sell the Toyama property. Ray moved quickly, redirecting the funds he had set aside for the Hiroshima project towards the ryokan instead. The Hiroshima land remains undeveloped for now, although Ray has plans for it in the future.

“I preferred not to buy a property where I have to build everything from scratch,” he said. 

A seven figure investment

The ryokan in Toyoma fits Ray’s checklist of a modern boutique ryokan stay.

It features a 10,000 sqft space spread across four floors, a commercial kitchen, a roof garden open in summer as a beer garden, a cafe space that seats 40 to 50, a yoga hall, a library, two onsens, and 11 rooms already fitted out in traditional ryokan style. 

“I felt that by taking on Hooray Toyama, I was giving it a chance to succeed. And if it succeeds, it proves to the previous owner that spending so many millions to renovate it was the right decision.”

Ray shared that the purchase price of the Toyama ryokan was seven figures, which he financed with an equity loan against his Singapore property, together with some of his savings. 

Monthly operating costs average around S$30,000, though they have spiked as high as S$60,000 in months when the boiler and the elevator both needed some attention since the property sat unused for four years.

Ray has drawn no salary for close to a year and a half. His advice to anyone considering something similar is blunt: don’t sell your primary residence in Singapore.

“Maintaining it provides a necessary contingency plan should business ventures abroad fail. If you sell it and something goes bad, it’s very hard to climb back onto the property ladder,” Ray advised.

Making Toyama easier to discover

In a small town like Toyama, Ray found that there was no established international community or expat bubble to draw from.

But he did find people who spoke both English and Japanese fluently—including those with mixed parentage and people who had spent years living between countries.

His general manager, for instance, is half-Singaporean and half-Japanese. His front-desk staff is half-Brazilian and half-Japanese, while his chef is half-Filipino and half-Japanese. His barista is Thai, and two Taiwanese women on the team have lived in Toyama for more than 20 years. His Japanese business partner and co-CEO, meanwhile, grew up in California.

Together, they make up a team of three full-time and six part-time staff. Ray is the only one who still can’t speak Japanese.

He sees that as an advantage when it comes to serving foreign travellers.

“Because I can’t speak Japanese, I’m attracting local people who can speak English and Japanese to come work for me,” he said. “In a small town like Toyama, that immediately stands out.”

The team acts as a bridge for foreign travellers, helping them make restaurant reservations, recommending izakayas and advising on which attractions are worth the trip.

That can be particularly useful in Toyama, where restaurant reservations are often required, English menus are uncommon, and much of the information is only available in Japanese.

“The best thing about Toyama is to eat at the local restaurants,” he said. “The food is of high quality, it’s of value, [and] it’s not ridiculously expensive like Tokyo.”

More than just a place to stay

Ray also wants the hotel itself to give guests a taste of what he values about the region.

Breakfast is served in the café space, with house-made sourdough bread and coffee. When the baker he had originally lined up fell through, he called his mother, who came to Toyama for three months and trained the team using a starter she had brought from Singapore.

At night, the shared restaurant space is closed for regular service but open for private chef pop-ups, an initiative Ray is developing to bring the local Toyama community and hotel guests together. 

Rooms at Hooray Toyama start from around JPY¥14,400 per night (roughly S$120), with pricing varying by season and weekend demand, and bookings are open on Trip.com, with the ryokan set to open in Sept.

From the Shinkansen station, Ray encourages guests to walk the 15 minutes to the hotel not just for practicality, but because the route takes you past Toyama’s old trams, some 80 to 100 years old. 

“As you walk, you get transported back in time. It’s quiet. It’s like imagining what your parents would experience if they came to Japan during the Showa era,” he reminisced.

Unlike traditional ryokans, Hooray Toyama doesn’t include a kaiseki dinner, which keeps pricing more accessible while still offering the full ryokan experience. “It’s a mini resort in a small hotel in the city,” Ray said. “I wouldn’t expect you to stay in your room all the time.”

Getting the hotel going

Early signs have been encouraging. The hotel has been running a soft launch over the past two months, with friends and family of the team staying at discounted rates.

The response has been largely positive—one group of eight guests from Taiwan arrived for a two-night stay and eventually extended it to a full week.

Ray has been documenting his journey on TikTok, with one video even racking up close to 700,000 views.

Getting there wasn’t a smooth journey, though.

Ray only managed to secure his hotel license in Jun after four years—only for his visa renewal to be rejected shortly after under stricter immigration policies from Japan’s administration under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

He’s found a co-partner to run operations on the ground while he handles the backend from Singapore, and he’s not giving up: he intends to head back to Toyama soon.

Ray’s eventual goal isn’t just to stop at one hotel.

Currently, he is consulting with an architect on plans to build a three-storey hotel with sea views on his land in Hiroshima. It will be a different scale from Toyama but based on the same philosophy of being a boutique property in a place with something to offer that visitors haven’t yet fully discovered.

Ray projects a 10% return on investment over 10 years. But he isn’t in a rush to see returns, knowing that time plays a crucial part in this huge investment of his.

For now, the hotelier’s measure of success is humble: get the Sept opening right, accumulate the first real guest reviews, and prove that a Singaporean who doesn’t speak Japanese can run a ryokan in a small Japanese town that most people have never heard of.

• Find out more about Hooray Toyama here.
• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Featured Image Credit: Hooray Toyama