A converted grocery-store community hall in rural Japan, communal long table, soft afternoon light

Host gatherings worth traveling for

Rent The Grocery Store — our 90-person event venue at the heart of a coliving neighborhood in rural Japan. One week to one month, fully ours.

Past gatheringsAnnual Popup 2026Build Month 2026

Who books this room

We rent The Grocery Store to people who want to gather their community somewhere with depth — not a hotel ballroom, not a coworking warehouse, not a wellness brand.

Company retreats

Take your team off the laptop. Open kitchen, communal table, slow mornings, mountain afternoons. The kind of offsite people remember.

Hackathons & unconferences

24-hour access, basement club, lounges, fast wifi. We've hosted builder weeks where the lights stayed on until the soba shop opened.

Popup villages & residencies

Two weeks. Three weeks. A month. Bring your community and live as neighbors. We extend across nearby ZuCity homes.

Cultural workshops & rejuvenation

Tea ceremony. Soba making. Sake brewing. Onsen circuits. Calligraphy. We connect you to neighborhood masters who don't usually teach foreigners.

The Grocery Store

An old supermarket reborn as the gathering hall at the heart of the ZuCity coliving neighborhood. Open kitchen, communal long table, lounges, basement club, outdoor patio, smoke room. Built for fifty people and the kind of week they'll remember.

90
Guest capacity
24/7
Venue access
7 days
Minimum booking
The Grocery StoreThe Grocery StoreThe Grocery StoreThe Grocery StoreThe Grocery StoreThe Grocery Store

What you get with the venue

  • ·Open kitchen with a communal long table
  • ·Multiple lounges and quiet working rooms
  • ·Basement music room and late-night space
  • ·Outdoor patio facing Mt. Asama
  • ·Designated smoke room
  • ·24-hour access for the duration of your stay
  • ·Shared cars on the ZuCity network
  • ·Walking-distance overflow rooms across our coliving homes

Komoro · the neighborhood you're gathering in

Komoro is a quaint city in Nagano Prefecture, ninety minutes from Tokyo by shinkansen. An active volcano in the front window. Three shinkansen stations within thirty minutes. Six ski resorts inside forty-five. A 1,300-year-old zen temple at the edge of town. Properties so cheap we are buying homes for the price of a used car.

Mt. Asama: 2,568m active volcano. It shapes the weather, the soil, the light. Some mornings it's hidden in cloud, some evenings it glows.
Komoro is so famous for soba that a major Tokyo chain named itself after it. The local shops have been perfecting the craft for generations.
Dozens of hot springs within a thirty-minute drive. Rustic mountain rotenburo, luxury private baths, everything in between.
Three shinkansen stations within thirty minutes. Tokyo Station to here in about an hour. Karuizawa twenty minutes away.

Sample experiences

Three shapes we've seen work. Customize freely. See how the 2026 popup unfolded; see how the Build Month came together.

5-day team retreat

Slow mornings — pour-over coffee at the long table, walks to the river, group breakfast someone made.

Working session at the venue or a temple-grounds offsite. Optional onsen run before dinner.

Communal dinner from a local soba master. One night at a sake brewery. One night around the basement club.

10-day builder week

Stand-up at the long table. Quiet rooms for deep work.

Talks, demos, hacking. Shared cars to a hot spring when heads need clearing.

Late-night basement sessions. Demo night. Closing dinner with the neighbors invited.

30-day popup village

Week one — settle in. Cook together. Walk the neighborhood. Meet the soba shop, the kissaten, the priest.

Weeks two and three — programmed days, open evenings. Workshops, talks, residencies. Extend across nearby ZuCity homes for the overflow.

Week four — the village quiets down. People you arrived as strangers with leave as people you'll see again next year.

Where you and your guests sleep

Beyond the venue, the ZuCity app surfaces every nearby room — our coliving houses, partner homes through the ADDress network, traditional family estates. We can build accommodation for groups of fifty within walking distance.

Bundle the local culture

The neighborhood is the program. We connect you to people who actually live this — neighbors, not vendors. Alpine air and ski circuits in winter; sakura, soba shops, and onsens year-round. More about how we think about this on the blog.

Tea ceremony in a hundred-year-old machiya.

Soba making with masters who've been at it for generations.

Sake and whiskey tastings at small distilleries you can't book online.

Onsen circuits — rustic mountain rotenburo, private baths, the works.

Pricing

$500
Daily rate · USDT or card

Longer stays unlock community rates

Our discount engine compounds — daily rate, bundled with rooms, and again if your community holds a network token. The four-week price ends up materially lower per day than a single week. We'll show you the math in the proposal.

What's included

  • ·The Grocery Store, fully yours for the duration
  • ·Open kitchen, lounges, basement room, outdoor patio
  • ·24-hour access for your community
  • ·Shared cars on the ZuCity network
  • ·Concierge introductions to soba masters, sake brewers, and onsens
  • ·Accommodation overflow across nearby ZuCity homes

Add-ons we can scope

Catering, neighborhood transport, accommodation overflow across the ZuCity network, ski/onsen/cultural bookings.

ZuCity is Japan's vibe curator

We're not the only good gathering spot in Japan. The ZuCity app aggregates the best coliving spaces, venues, and community events across the country — Komoro, Karuizawa, Tokyo, Hokkaido, Kyushu. See what's happening right now. Read our take on why we built it this way.

Hosting your gathering at The Grocery Store plugs you into that network. We'll cross-promote your event to the right communities, help you find collaborators in nearby cities, and make it easy for your guests to extend their stay across Japan.

Frequently asked

How far is it from Tokyo?
Ninety minutes on the Hokuriku Shinkansen to Sakudaira, then ten minutes by car or local train. Karuizawa is twenty minutes away. Three shinkansen stations within thirty minutes total.
Which airport should our guests fly into?
Haneda (HND) is the cleanest connection — direct shinkansen from Tokyo Station. Narita works but adds a transit. Smaller groups have flown into Komatsu and driven through the mountains; the views are worth it.
What's the wifi and AV like?
Fiber-grade wifi throughout the venue. Workstations and quiet rooms set up for video calls. Sound system for parties, projector for talks. We can scope specialized AV in the proposal.
Can we bring our own chef? What about catering?
Yes. Open kitchen, full-size pantry, working relationships with local soba masters, an itamae who travels, and a couple of farm-to-table cooks who can shop the morning of. Bring whoever you want.
We have fifty people — where do they sleep?
Adjacent ZuCity homes plus partner network rooms in Komoro and Karuizawa. We've slept fifty within a fifteen-minute walk before. The proposal will lay out specific rooms based on your dates.
What's the weather like?
Spring is sakura. Summer is mountain-cool while Tokyo melts. Autumn is the best month if you only get one. Winter is snow and onsens. The volcano is in the window year-round.
Are there sound restrictions?
The basement is the late-night room — built for it. Above ground, the neighborhood is residential, so we keep things reasonable past 10pm. Festivals and outdoor parties happen in town all the time, but coordinated with neighbors.
What's the minimum and maximum group size?
Seven-day minimum on the venue itself. Capacity is fifty inside The Grocery Store. We've had groups of twelve and groups of fifty; both work.
How far in advance should we book?
For one-week rentals: one to two months. For longer (10+ days): three to six months. The popular months — sakura in late March, October for foliage, January/February for snow — get booked first.
What kinds of events don't fit here?
Anything that needs a hotel ballroom and a banquet manager. Anything that's about projecting status more than sharing time. We send those organizers somewhere else with no hard feelings.

Reserve The Grocery Store

The Grocery Store

$500 USDT / day

Event space, working, and community center at the center of ZuCity's coliving neighborhood. Weekly and monthly rentals available for conferences and retreats.

  • The Grocery Store, fully yours for the duration
  • Open kitchen, lounges, basement room, outdoor patio
  • 24-hour access for your community
  • Shared cars on the ZuCity network
  • Concierge introductions to soba masters, sake brewers, and onsens
  • Accommodation overflow across nearby ZuCity homes

Reserve The Grocery Store

Tell us about your gathering

We read every inquiry. We come back within a few days with a tailored proposal — dates, accommodation plan, programming options, pricing math, the works.

Tell us about your gathering

Keep reading

About ZuCity

Why we bought houses in rural Japan and what we're trying to build.

About Komoro

The town you'll be gathering in — Mt. Asama, soba, sakura, onsens, neighbors.

Snow Sports

Six ski resorts within forty-five minutes. A working winter on the snow.

Buying Akiyas

Why rural property in Japan is this cheap, and what we're doing about it.

ZuCity App

How to find what's open, what to book, what to apply to.

Send this to whoever helps you decide

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