PROTO-ARCHITECTURE

Our first full day in Japan we woke up to the lovely garden of the Miyama family.  The family has owned the nearby land for nearly 400 years, and can trace it’s history back through that time.  Mr. Miyama, in fact, represents the 19th generation of his family and his children, the 20th.  Their house was originally built as a farmhouse, over 100 years ago, with an adjacent building for storing rice from the farm.  They have since added onto the house, and the barn has been converted into Mr. Miyama’s office space, but they maintain a large portion of the house in traditional Japanese fashion, with tatami mats on the floor a shoji screens dividing the rooms. The site is beautiful, you access the ground via one of two gates, and walk through an ellaborate and well tended garden.  It is in stark contrast to the surrounding city, and while we slept the night before we could only head the sounds of crickets.  We slept on the floor, in traditional fashion, after converting the room from dining to sleeping by removing the chairs and laying down mats.

The garden has several meandering trails, and a natural brook that comes from the adjacent hillside filling small koy filled ponds.  We sat outside, drank coffee and got ready for the day.