Osaka Investment Promotion and Support Site

Australian Head Spa Education Company Expands into Osaka – Interview with Founder Alexander Bowyer

Please introduce your company.

Alexander Bowyer 合同会社 was established in 2025.
 
As a head spa educator, I teach contemporary Japanese technique, and increasingly that means working with the growing number of international practitioners now coming to Japan specifically to learn the craft at its source. Most of that runs through Yohaku Academy (余白), the head spa program I've built here, which takes practitioners from an introductory level through to advanced certification.

One of my strategic goals is to build strong partnerships with Japanese companies to help take the head spa concept, which is Japanese in origin, out to the rest of the world.  Head spa has become remarkably popular internationally over the last few years, and I relocated to Japan, as an educator who already had a working relationship with the industry here, because I thought there was a real opportunity to do that properly, from Osaka, rather than at second hand from overseas.

Could you tell us the reason or motivation for establishing an office in Osaka City?

Choosing Osaka wasn't a difficult decision, for a few reasons.
The most important is that Osaka is really the home of the modern head spa. The treatment as we understand it today was pioneered here by Takara Belmont, including the original YUME head spa basin, and if you're going to teach something seriously, you want to be teaching it where it comes from. A large part of my professional network in Japan is here in Osaka as well, which made the practical side of setting up much easier than it might otherwise have been.

There was also a cultural fit that I don't think should be underestimated. Within Japan, Osaka has a reputation for being relaxed, warm and fairly direct, and that sits comfortably with the Australian temperament - probably more so than Tokyo would have. For a business built around hospitality and putting people at ease, being somewhere that shares that sensibility matters.

 

What kind of support did you receive from INVEST OSAKA?

INVEST OSAKA's support counted for a lot in getting the business off the ground. Setting up a company in a country that isn't your own involves a lot of moving parts, and they connected me with the right people at the right time - accountants, the administrative help I needed on the visa side, an introduction to the Osaka Chamber of Commerce, and a steer towards language study, which I'm still working away at.

I should single out Ms Nagisa Matsuba, who went well beyond anything I'd have expected. A lot of the reason the launch went as smoothly as it did comes down to her, and I'm grateful for it. The subsidised office space was a real help too - it took a lot of the friction out of incorporation at exactly the point where that friction is hardest to deal with.