Europe and America figured this out years ago, and now Japan is catching on: build the camper around the dog, not the trail. Carstay is bringing its SAny.VAN to TOKYO DOG SHOW 2026 — and the venue is anything but accidental. According to the company itself, roughly 80% of SAny.VAN buyers own a dog. Everything about the build serves one idea: life on the road with your pet, no compromises.
The base vehicle? Almost anything. Toyota Hiace, Nissan Vanette Van, brand new or used — Carstay will even convert a van the customer already owns. Standard kit includes a sofa-bed, sink and a battery pack. Add-ons cover air conditioning, solar panels and everything you need for hot-weather overnights and off-grid stops. Build time runs about a month and a half, prices start at 2.42 million yen — roughly $15,000 at current rates. One detail matters here: that’s the price of the conversion, not necessarily of a full van with base chassis.
And that’s exactly the point — flexibility. A full-size motorhome is expensive, thirsty and miserable in city traffic. A compact van on a Hiace or Vanette platform is easier to park, cheaper to service, simpler to fix. For dog owners, the priorities are nothing like the glossy brochures: a place to sleep, water, a crate, summer cooling and a way to clean the cabin fast after a muddy walk. That’s the whole list.
Then comes the second trick — camper-sharing. When the SAny.VAN sits idle, owners can rent it out through Carstay’s platform and offset running costs. In Japan, where parking and ownership are brutally expensive, that flips the math entirely. The camper stops being a once-a-year toy and starts paying its own way.
On the market, SAny.VAN slots in between factory builds like the Nissan MYROOM, expensive Japanese Hiace customs and pure DIY conversions. Factory is cleaner, DIY is cheaper. Carstay is selling the middle ground: fast, with a clear option list, built around one specific scenario — trips with the dog.
And here’s the most interesting part. No big engine. No off-road armor. Just a vehicle built around how people actually live: dogs don’t always get into hotels. They always get into your van.
