Our guest today is Kou Sundburg, who is the founder of Kiraku. Kiraku operates multiple projects that aim to preserve Japan’s rich cultural and natural heritage for future generations. Kou has a strong business background with a unique bi-cultural vantage point of the Japanese tradition. Kou’s diverse projects include transforming abandoned machiya, or a traditional Japanese townhouse, in Kyoto into a Michelin-awarded luxury ryokan and reviving a sake brewery that was founded in 1793 but unfortunately shut down in 2012. Now the brewery became a micro-sake brewery to express the rich local terroir. In this episode, we will discuss how Kou came up with the business to preserve Japanese culture and tradition, his intriguing projects of hotels and restaurants that you would want to experience on your next trip to Japan, how seriously Japan is losing cultural heritage, and much, much more!!!

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