Early in his career at the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, when he was still on the bottom rung of the ladder, Tetsuya Kobayashi was sent to the Kamikochi Imperial Hotel. Part of his duties there were the cleaning-up operations. "I shall never forget my first experience," he said. "While I was working, I was listening to a Mozart symphony being played on a disk. I could look out at the Japan Alps. It was the best time." He was happy, because he was at the beginning of what he had always wanted to do: to be a hotelier.
Now, 32 years later executive vice president and general manager of the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, Kobayashi is even happier. "I love people, and I love meeting people," he said. "I have a vocation for hotel work. My real mission is to make guests happy."
He came from Niigata to study law at Keio University. He was a sports-crazy youth, "playing and watching," he said. He was a music lover and a book lover too, with a developed sense of fun. Graduated in 1969, he went straight from university into the employ of the Imperial Hotel.