How they live in a Japanese village. Ainokura Japanese Village

I could sit in one place all month in Japan and remain just as pleased. But I decided: if you are going to travel, then you need to plan everything so that the trip is the most diverse. Therefore, Takayama ended up on my route: firstly, these are mountains, and secondly, these are Gassno's houses. From Takayama, you could go to a few more places, such as the famous village of Shirakawago and the world's largest cable car, but bus routes turned out to be refreshingly expensive. Of course, I was aware of Japanese train prices, they are scary, but there are ways to save money, but there are no ways to save money on buses. A round-trip ticket for the route, which lasts only an hour, costs 5,000 yen. for the sake of cable car, or rather, for the sake of the view that opens from it, I would have paid so much plus about so much for tickets to the road itself, but it was closed for the annual technical inspection for exactly the 5 days that I was in Takayama, literally the same day.

Therefore, I had to be content with walking around Takayama itself and the local village of Gassno, or rather the museum, which was made based on its motives, collecting all the old houses on one territory. The name "gassno" comes from the word for hands folded in prayer. Those. in Nepalese, you can say that this is the village of Namaste =) The reasons for choosing this form are not religious, it’s just that in this region of Japan there is a lot of snow in winter.

All of these houses were built during the Edo period, meaning they could be between 400 and 150 years old. Wow! Something, of course, was restored, but it's still hard to believe that a simple tree could stand for so long.

Spring, icicles on the roof.

Each house belonged to a family, and so it is called by name. You can wander inside and visit different rooms.

It's mostly very dark in there, and my camera doesn't have a flash, so there's only one photo.

You can wander among the trees and feel like you are in ancient Japan. I additionally catch flashbacks of Indonesia and Batak houses on Lake Toba. All these mountains I have traveled South-East Asia and collected in my mind a collection of what I like best in each country. And then she came to Japan and found all this here. Even my favorite houses improved for winter! There is also a lake, but it is small.

The pure truth about a lot of snow. Outside mid-April, and still how much!

Thatched roofs.

And again icicles on the roofs.

How beautiful it is here!

The structure of the Japanese village is completely preserved. There is a temple at the very top, and old statues of Buddhas in aprons.

And other religious buildings.

There are vegetable gardens.

Wood shed.

Mill.

And a cast-iron kettle ripens on the coals.

If it were not for the lack of people, museum displays and signs on every corner, one could really imagine that he was in the distant past.

You can take a picture in clothes near the cart, and for free, but it’s probably no longer possible to wander around the village in a suit.

Puppet Museum. These dolls were exhibited at the entrance to houses in which there were children-girls, so that they would grow well and be healthy. The doll was supposed to be not one, but a whole set. Dolls for this museum were donated by local residents.

Sudden retro hi-tech. Something souvenir for tourists.

Today I will completely overwhelm you with beauty, because. right after the village, I climbed to the top of the mountain. Up the neat steps.

Okay, I won't exaggerate. And along the road, littered with snow, I had to make my way, and along the forest path.

But in the most dangerous and difficult places there were steps and railings anyway. This is Japanese concern for others and love for details.

Nice. And there is a bench to admire this beauty.

Something like this.

Or without extra objects in the frame.

I could still walk along various small tracks to get to a few more temples, but the snow blockages on the road and the total emptiness caused certain doubts in me. Yes, and my sneakers are already wet, despite all the Japanese concern for the neighbor.

I would love to come back here with good shoes, a bike and plenty of time to wander around and ride a lot. The mountains in Japan are no worse than the Himalayas.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the borders, a stream of Russians poured into Japan - both tourists and businessmen ferrying old cars. In just a couple of years, the number of Russians living near port cities east coast increased hundreds of times. In this regard, and to popularize the Russian life in 1993, a theme amusement park called the Russian Village was opened near the city of Niigata, in which a church, a hotel, museums, restaurants, a circus and much more were built. The village existed for 10 years, after which the bank financing the project went bankrupt, and with it the village. Currently, what has been preserved on the territory is available for inspection, in particular, the Suzdal Cathedral, the Trans-Siberian Museum, stuffed mammoths, books, costumes, postcards, photographs ... There are many different equipment in the office premises - from old computers and color copiers to a studio audio equipment... The village is located a few kilometers from railway, so they used to get there by car. Immediately after the parking lot, a copy of the Suzdal Cathedral, ticket offices and an attached hotel building, made in a classical architectural style, open up to your eyes.



The hotel is called small, and three years ago it burned a little, set on fire by some hooligans. As a result, burned out main tower and most of the rooms on the right wing, in which melted TVs look very colorful.







On the ground floor there were administrative offices with now "leaky" racks of audio broadcasts, computer servers and boxes of various pieces of paper, in particular, licensed software from Microsoft. Disks and serial networks - everything is in place.




Peter the Great, together with his horse, silently looks at what is happening, and we climb the stairs to the surviving rooms - both the usual suite and the wedding suite. In a regular suite, I had the honor to spend the night before exploring the village and I can say with full confidence that the room turned out to be more than worthy!



Somewhere nearby is a restaurant and a kitchen, but it is not as interesting as the Suzdal Cathedral. Built and painted in 1993, even after almost 20 years, it has not lost the brightness of its colors. And even Taiga skis, not God knows how they got there, do not spoil the impression.







Outside, the cathedral is no less beautiful, especially in good sunny weather.


From the cathedral and the hotel there is a covered gallery to the entertainment part of the park. Inside the gallery there are photographs with views of Russia from Chaliapin's house to Lake Baikal.


The gallery opens onto the first floor of the museum, where visitors were invited to get acquainted with the geography of Russia, its nature and climate. Maps on the walls, layouts on the tables - time and vandals did not spare them, but there is still something to see.


Leaving the museum, we get to a large square, around which there are various buildings - a restaurant, a forestry workshop, the Afanasyev Theater, etc...



Desolation reigns in the restaurant, the menu is gathering dust on the floor, in the corner, delicious sausages have been smoked for fifteen years already. Judging by the text of the menu, the food was good - dumplings, borsch, pies, but the images of the dishes are very strange.




There are no spectators in the theater, they are replaced by a mountain of chairs in front of the stage, and sound equipment looking lonely through the eyes of the speakers.


And on the second floor there is an office that looks like after a sudden search. Books, floppy disks, photographs are scattered mixed with color copiers, laser printers and monitors.





In the next room - posters and costumes of dubious nationality. Apparently Russians.

A little to the side, behind the bushes, you can see an amazing mixture of an Easter egg and Orthodox Disneyland, but in fact this is a museum of the Trans-Siberian Railway - the longest railway in the world. The Japanese, for all their love of trains, still have a hard time imagining what it means to travel by train for a week. However, this is not surprising, because their Sinskansen would have passed from Moscow to Vladivostok in just a day and a half, not counting the time of stops.

On the walls of the museum there are posters describing all the seven days of the journey and the cities that meet, in the center there is a model of the train itself. The locomotive has been gone for a long time, but three cars have been preserved, which is called "in the section", where you can see the internal structure.

And in order to finally destroy the confidence of the Japanese in the impossibility of a week-long life in the car, in the neighboring rooms there are real compartments, a water boiler and other elements of the interior of the car, and not copies, but real ones.


To the side of the Trans-Siberian Museum is a small, empty inside, circus and another building, much more interesting. Entering it, we immediately stumble upon the skeleton of a mammoth - the ribs under the ceiling, the skull in the corner.

And behind the wall hides a real adult stuffed mammoth, on a scale of 100 percent of the original and a small (two meters at the withers) mammoth, which you can climb and ride.


The last building in the village is a remake - there are ball throwers, as written for golf, but too large for them.

Zhura-zhura-crane! He flew over a hundred lands. He flew around, went around, Wings, worked his legs. We asked the crane: Where is best land? He answered, flying: There is no better native land!

: After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of borders, a stream of Russians poured into Japan, both tourists and businessmen transporting old cars. In just a couple of years, the number of Russians living near the port cities of the east coast has increased hundreds of times. In this regard, and to popularize the Russian life in 1993, a theme amusement park called the Russian Village was opened near the city of Niigata, in which a church, a hotel, museums, restaurants, a circus and much more were built. The village existed for 10 years, after which the bank financing the project went bankrupt, and with it the village. Currently, what has been preserved on the territory is available for inspection, in particular the Suzdal Cathedral, the Trans-Siberian Museum, stuffed mammoths, books, costumes, postcards, photographs ... There are many different equipment in the office premises - from old computers and color copiers to studio audio hardware...

(Total 62 photos)

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1. The village is located a few kilometers from the railway, so people used to get there by car. Immediately after the parking lot, a copy of the Suzdal Cathedral, ticket offices and an attached hotel building, made in a classical architectural style, open up to your eyes.

2.

3.

4.

5. The hotel is called small, and three years ago it burned a little, set on fire by some hooligans. As a result, the main tower and most of the rooms of the right wing burned out, in which melted TVs look very colorful.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13. On the ground floor there were administrative offices with now "leaky" racks of audio broadcasts, computer servers and boxes of various pieces of paper, in particular licensed software from Microsoft. Disks and serial networks - everything is in place.

14.

15.

16. Peter the Great, together with his horse, silently looks at what is happening, and we climb the stairs to the surviving rooms - both the usual suite and the wedding suite. In a regular suite, I had the honor to spend the night before exploring the village and I can say with full confidence that the room turned out to be more than worthy!

17.

18.

19.

20.

21. Somewhere nearby is a restaurant and a kitchen, but this is not as interesting as the Suzdal Cathedral. Built and painted in 1993, even after almost 20 years, it has not lost the brightness of its colors.

22.

23. And even Taiga skis, God knows how they got there, do not spoil the impression.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28. From the outside, the cathedral is no less beautiful, especially on a good sunny day.

29.

30.

31. From the cathedral and the hotel there is a covered gallery to the entertainment part of the park. Inside the gallery there are photographs with views of Russia from Chaliapin's House to Lake Baikal.

32.

33.

34. The gallery goes to the first floor of the museum, where visitors were invited to get acquainted with the geography of Russia, its nature and climate. Maps on the walls, layouts on the tables - they were not spared by time and vandals, but there is still something to see.

35.

36.

37. Leaving the museum, we get to a large square, around which there are various buildings - a restaurant, a Forest Workshop, the Afanasyev Theater, etc ...

38.

39.

40.

41. Desolation reigns in the restaurant, the menu is gathering dust on the floor, in the corner, delicious sausages have been smoked for fifteen years already.

42. Judging by the text of the menu, they fed well - dumplings, borscht, pies, but the images of the dishes are very strange.

43.

44. There are no spectators in the theater, they are replaced by a mountain of chairs in front of the stage, and sound equipment looking lonely through the eyes of the speakers.

45. And on the second floor there is an office that looks like after a sudden search. Books, floppy disks, photographs are scattered mixed with color copiers, laser printers and monitors.

46.

47.

48. In the next room, posters and costumes of dubious nationality. Looks like Russians.

49.

50. A little to the side, behind the bushes, you can see an amazing mixture of an Easter egg and Orthodox Disneyland, but in fact this is a museum of the Trans-Siberian Railway - the longest railway in the world.

51. The Japanese, for all their love of trains, still have a hard time imagining what it means to travel by train for a week. However, this is not surprising, because their Sinskansen would have passed from Moscow to Vladivostok in just a day and a half, not counting the time of stops.

52. On the walls of the museum there are posters describing all the seven days of the journey and the meeting cities, in the center there is a model of the train itself. The locomotive has been gone for a long time, but three cars have been preserved, which is called “in section”, where you can see the internal structure.

53.

55. And in order to finally destroy the confidence of the Japanese in the impossibility of a weekly life in the car, in the neighboring rooms there are real compartments, a water boiler and other elements of the interior of the car, and not copies, but real ones.

56.

57. On the side of the Trans-Siberian Museum is a small, empty inside, circus and another building, much more interesting.

58. Entering it, we immediately stumble upon the skeleton of a mammoth - the ribs are under the ceiling, the skull is in the corner.

59. And behind the wall is a real adult stuffed mammoth, on a scale of 100 percent of the original.

60. And a small (two meters at the withers) mammoth, which you can climb and ride.

61. The last building in the village is a remake - there are devices for throwing balls, as it is written for golf, but too large for it.

62. Zhura-zhura-crane!
He flew over a hundred lands.
Flew, circled
Wings, legs worked hard.

We asked the crane:
Where is the best land?
He answered, flying:
There is no better native land!

Country rising sun is amazing, everyone will find a corner to their liking in it, whether it is modern Tokyo or traditional Kyoto. When everyone is in charge tourist routes passed, it's time to go to the Japanese wilderness. In this post we will talk about the village of Ainokura, a fabulous valley of gingerbread houses.

2. High green hills reliably protected the picturesque villages of Shirakawago and Gokayama (the settlement of Ainokura belongs to it) from prying eyes for many centuries. Thanks to the development of road infrastructure and domestic tourism, historical villages hidden in hard-to-reach mountainous areas Gifu and Toyama Prefectures (Honshu Island, Japan) became known outside their native land. In 1995, the charming villages were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

3. About three hours drive from the popular tourist city of Takayama (Gifu Prefecture), about ten minutes walk up the hill, and you have a view of a small valley. It is so quiet here that you can hear the wind howling and the grass swaying. Tiny rice fields of rich green color, tall pine trees and a whitish haze that covers the village in the late evening - in Ainokura, the eyes rest, the mind clears up, and the body is saturated with oxygen. The air here is so clean that you feel dizzy out of habit.

4. The farmhouses are built using the gassho-zukuri technique traditional for these areas. Gassho literally means "hands folded in prayer" - the two steep slopes of the thatched roof symbolize the palms of the monks.

5. Not a single nail was used in the construction of the dwellings. In the hands of the Japanese, wood and straw turned into reliable and durable materials: the houses withstood the harsh climate and survived the great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of their creators.

6. In summer it is humid here, in winter there are snowdrifts up to the waist, and the huts stand for themselves and stand for 200 and 300 years.

8. In the village of Ainokura, there are 23 houses made using the gassho-zukuri technique.

10. Locals are subsistence farming and eat mainly what they have grown.

11. The hostess complained to me that it was hard with carrots - they ordered from the city. But watermelons are fine.

12. Eating vegetables from your own garden is just fine, but you can’t earn money on the education of children with one garden. That is why enterprising farmers converted their houses into museums and cafes, and someone even began to rent out rooms to tourists.

13. There are 6 houses in Ainokura, the owners of which are ready to let a stranger stay for the night. Rooms are in high demand - you have to book in advance, and sometimes much in advance (depending on the season).

14. A night in a thatched house will cost 8,000-10,000 yen (5,000-7,000 rubles per person) and will give you the opportunity to walk around the village when the last one leaves it tourist bus. The fee includes not only a bed in a separate room, but also two meals a day (dinner and breakfast). The "Goyomon" cabin where I stayed is over three hundred years old, and the descendants of the original owner still live in it.

15. Inside each traditional hut there is a spacious hall with a square hole in the floor exactly in the middle. This room serves as a living room and dining room - around the hearth, the household and their guests sit on thin pillows.

16. Residents of Ainokur make a fire at home every day, grill fish on coals and boil water in a cast-iron kettle suspended on a massive chain.

17. A typical local dinner consists of boiled vegetables, pickles, charcoal fish, tempura and river fish sashimi, which must be accompanied by a bowl of rice. All vegetables, with the exception of carrots, are grown here. Fish caught nearby.

18. A light breeze rushes through the open window, and you sleep very sweetly, as you once slept in your native Russian village, where you were also fed food from the garden and told old fairy tales at night (and completely free of charge).

19. Early in the morning a dense fog spreads around the village, and only the yellowish tint of the grass hints that the sun has risen.

24. The kettle swings over embers, and breakfast is waiting on a small table.

25. The morning menu includes a bowl of rice, scrambled eggs, fresh and stewed vegetables, tofu boiled in broth and pickles.

26. After a hearty breakfast and farewell to the hospitable hostess, your legs themselves carry you to the hill, which overlooks the valley.

27. The landscape pacifies, I don’t want to return to the metropolis at all. Like any other village, Ainokura inevitably ages. Young people are drawn to big cities, and only pensioners remain in the "valley of gingerbread houses".

28. Having cooked in the capital's cauldron, the children of Ainokura will surely return here. The cleanest mountain air, tasty and healthy food, own house with a long history as a source of income - not life, but a dream. And I can only hope that the meeting with fairy village was not the last.

Ainokura Village (相倉, Ainokura)
How to get there (not a short distance):
It is advisable to combine a trip to Ainokura with a visit to Shirakawago (白川郷, English Shirakawago), the largest historical village in the area
There is a local bus from Shirakawago (40 minutes, 1300 yen one way) to Ainokura (the stop is called 相倉口、Ainokuraguchi)
There are two typical routes to Shirakawago from Tokyo that are popular with tourists as they pass through picturesque cities teeming with sights: Kanazawa and Takayama
1) Through Kanazawa (Kanazawa/金沢）
High speed train from Tokyo to Kanazawa (about 14,000 yen one way, about 3 hours on the way), from there by Nohi Bus to Shirakawago (1,850 yen one way, a little over 2 hours on the way)
2) Through Takayama (Takayama/高山）
Bus from Shinjuku to Takayama (6,690 yen one way; 5.5 hours) by Nohi Bus, from there by the same company to Shirakawago (2,470 yen one way; 2.5 hours)
Traveling through Takayama is much cheaper, but almost twice as long.
There is another option to get through Nagoya, in terms of money and time it will be almost the same as through Takayama.

Japanese national house

Somehow I was in Ethnographic Museum under open sky near Riga, there in picturesque place Latvian traditional houses, an old mill, barns and other buildings are located on the shore of Lake Juglas. It is very interesting and informative to see, but in a similar ethnographic village I have never been to Russia, I don’t even know if there is one. If there is, then for the sake of completeness, two types of traditional Russian houses should be represented there. The fact is that Russians, as an ethnic group, have developed from two nationalities - North Russian and South Russian, they differ ethnographically, linguistically, genetically - they have a different dialect, folk costume, etc., Russian epics, for example, are the fruit of the memory of the North Russians, and the Russian bath is an invention northern Rus'. Even the dwellings are different, in the southern Russian regions - the estate type, and in the north houses and outbuildings were built under the same roof. The Japanese traditional house bears little resemblance to the Russian one, assembled from logs, in Japan they built frame-type houses, the walls were not load-bearing, but the wooden columns and beams, which were connected without the use of nails, formed the skeleton of the house, they were the load-bearing elements of such a house. But in terms of the type of layout, the Japanese dwelling can be compared with the North Russian one - here, too, the residential part of the house and outbuildings were erected under one roof. I want to talk about the traditional Japanese house.

In the land of the rising sun, the national house was the home of farmers, artisans and merchants, that is, all major castes, excluding samurai, built it in several traditional styles based on geographical and climatic conditions as well as lifestyle local residents. Most of these houses usually fall into one of two main categories - farmhouses and country houses, there are also subclasses of styles, such as houses in fishing villages. Such folk houses have survived to this day, now they are considered historical landmarks. There are open-air museums in Japan, such as Nihon Minka-en in Kawasaki. Houses built in the gassho-zukuri style survive in two villages in central Japan—Shirakawa in Gifu Prefecture and Gokayama in Toyama Prefecture.

Two villages, Shirakawa and Gokayama, gems Japanese archipelago, in terms of significance for the Japanese, these houses can be compared with Kizhi for Russians. By the way, not everyone knows how a village differs from a village in Russia; for reference, there has always been a church in the village. So, these Japanese historical villages of Shirakawa and Gokayama are located in a remote mountainous region of the island of Honshu, which in winter was cut off from the rest of Japan for a long time. A special school of architecture has developed here - gassho-zukuri. Traditional dwellings in the area are characterized by steep thatched roofs. The main occupation of the locals was silkworm breeding, so the upper floors of the dwellings are skillfully adapted for the needs of silkworms. Gassho-zukuri, probably the most recognizable style, houses featured high, gabled roofs. Such houses are well suited for heavy snowfall and downpour, the steep gabled roof allowed rain and snow to fall directly from it, preventing water from entering through the roof into the house, and to a lesser extent preventing the straw from getting too wet and starting to rot. Villages inscribed on the List world heritage UNESCO as an outstanding example of a traditional way of life, perfectly adapted to the environment and local social and economic conditions. To illustrate the post, photographs with images of houses from the village of Shirakawa were used.

In building these traditional houses, the Japanese used cheap and readily available materials, as farmers could not afford to import expensive materials. Such houses are made entirely of wood, bamboo, clay and various types of grass and straw. The skeletal structure of the house, roof, walls and supports are made of wood. The outer walls were often completed with bamboo and clay, the inner walls were not installed, and consisted of sliding doors, wooden bars and/or paper screens. Grass and straw were used to cover the roofs and for tatami floors. Sometimes clay tiles were used in addition to thatch. Stone was used to strengthen or create the foundation of a house, that is, a type of foundation, but it was not used for the house itself. The house turned out to be a frame house, the walls were not load-bearing, they left holes for windows or doors, that is, shoji paper screens were used, as well as heavier wooden doors.

Further, to describe the Japanese house, I used material from several posts by the LJ user Come in, you will be a guest! , a wonderful blog, who has an account in LiveJournal - I recommend adding it as a friend. So, the method of building such houses is as follows. Such houses do not have a solid strip foundation. At the site of the future home, the soil surface is leveled and compacted tightly. Then stones of a suitable size with a flat and even top surface are driven into the compacted surface. They are driven in in those places where the supporting pillars of the house should be located. Approximately every meter and a half along the entire perimeter and along future walls. Each vertical pillar rests on a stone, like a foundation, although not solid. This design protects the supporting pillars of the house from direct contact with the soil and saves the tree from being constantly damp and rotting.

A frame of supporting pillars and upper beams is installed on the foundation stones, the contour of the future house is obtained. The main frame of the house is erected without the use of nails and other iron fasteners. Logs are interconnected by a complex system of grooves and wooden rivets-clamps. The roof frame is put on top of this frame. It is worn sequentially - with triangular arches attached to each symmetrical pair of supporting pillars along the entire length of the house. Then the roof arches are connected by transverse beams. The beams and log-bearing structures are fastened together with ropes of rice straw and tows of young tree shoots. All fasteners are either made of ropes or in a thrust, in grooves. The finished frame on the sides of the roof is first covered with long mats made of reed or a variety of sasa bamboo, these mats form the inner surface of the roof. On top of these mats, bundles of reeds are tightly bound in layers. Reed bundles are stacked in even rows and attached to the roof with ropes of rice straw. With these ropes, the mats are, as it were, stitched like threads, fastening the bundles to the beams of the frame.

The roof of such houses in cross section is an equilateral triangle, its size strongly depends on the size of the house itself. The larger the house, the higher the roof. Accordingly, the space formed under the roof can be divided into floors. If the house is small, then two floors, in a large house - three floors. Any possible gaps between the walls of the house and the roof are laid with bundles of the same reed. After installing the roof, the house is sheathed with boards from the outside and equipped from the inside. The ends of the roof are also sheathed with boards, in which ventilation windows are then cut through.

Usually the house has two galleries along its entire length. The front (facade) faces the street, and the back - to the mountains or gardens. The ends of the house are usually deaf or with small windows. In modern houses, often attached to the ends additional premises under conventional modern roofs. But there are also sliding doors - direct access to the technical premises of the house from the street, not from the inside. Galleries are usually open or curtained from the sun and immodest glances with mats. The galleries were closed at night, in winter or during a storm with wooden panels in the manner of sliding doors. These panels are stored in a closet at the end of the gallery in their free time from home protection. In modern houses, most often the galleries are closed, especially from the back of the house. Glazed or simply half closed in the manner of a veranda.

From one of the edges of the house, rarely in the middle, there is an entrance to the house, you can, of course, enter from any point in the open gallery, but this is impolite if you do not live in this house. The interior of the house is divided into several rooms. Their number and size depends on the overall size of the house. Usually, the internal layout of the house is laid already at the level of driving in the foundation stones, since these stones determine the position of the structural nodes and corners of the house, both external and internal. All life in the house takes place mainly on the ground floor. The second floor is for work and storage, it is used as a workshop for small-scale peasant craft. The third floor, even if it exists, is usually not used, except that all sorts of herbs useful in the household are dried and stored here. The third floor is only a flat lattice. This is a type of technical floor needed to monitor the condition of the roof. The volume of the room under the roof primarily works as a thermostat, keeping the temperature inside the house approximately constant. In summer it is very hot outside, but inside the house it is quite cool and comfortable, not only air conditioning is needed, but even a fan.

Depending on the size of the house and the wealth of the family, the house may have several closets or lounges. But the general layout is about the same. The central room of the house is a hearth, on the one hand - storage and utility rooms, on the other - front, clean rooms for relaxation. Sometimes the genkan hallway is actually combined with the kitchen. At the entrance there is a couple of utility rooms where all sorts of large items that are usually used outside the house are stored. The floors in such utility rooms are densely packed earth or slatted flooring. The floor level in the living rooms is raised above the ground by about 20 cm. One of the main interior spaces of the house on the ground floor is a common room with a hearth. Depending on the size of the house and the number of inhabitants, the hearth may have one or two hearths at different ends of the room. The hearths here are everywhere of the same design - a square hole in the floor, filled with sand and ash from already burned firewood. It has one or two cast-iron coasters for the boiler and kettle. Either mats lie around the hearth, or the room itself is covered with tatami. The hearth room was usually used as a dining and living room for the whole family, but almost never as a bedroom.

There is no ceiling in the dining room as such - a grating that opens a direct exit of smoke through the roof. Above each hearth, on ropes attached to the ceiling beams, hang large wooden shields, slightly larger in size than the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe hearth. Their task is to prevent hot smoke from going straight up, so that the ceiling does not catch fire, and hot air more or less evenly disperses throughout the volume of the house. On top of the shield, you can put something that needs drying - a raincoat or hat. Or whatever items you need. There are no chimneys, the smoke rises from the hearth and, having passed through the entire volume of the house, exits right through the thatched roof. At the same time, everything inside the house and the roof itself are thoroughly smoked and dried from the inside. In these houses, insects and mice do not live in the roofs. And the roof hardly rots even in the rainy season or under the snow. The ceilings in such houses are not solid, but lattice, so that the smoke rises freely. Solid flooring on the floor on the second floor is only along the walls. If the house is large, then in those places where there is no hearth, the flooring is also solid.

On both sides of the central room of the house with a hearth are smaller rooms. Some of them are used as utility rooms, the rest are used as rooms for rest and receiving guests, the floors here are covered with tatami, in one of the rooms of the house there is a tokonoma with beautiful scrolls, bunches of flowers and trinkets. Here they received guests and slept. One of the rooms is used as a dressing room, things necessary for life in the house are stored here, and bedding was cleaned here during the day - futons, pillows, blankets. The dressing room stores all sorts of household items that it is desirable to have at hand every day.

At the end of the gallery-veranda there is a bathroom with a wooden ofuro bath. A detached outbuilding on the outside has a toilet-type toilet, the secondary product falls down into a special bucket, and then is taken out to the fields as fertilizer. On the one hand - the main residential building of the estate, on the other - a small outbuilding. they are connected by a covered walkway. They could keep small calves in the outbuilding, there is no floor in the calf, just trampled earth covered with straw. And the buckets are suspended, on which the calf was lowered with food and taken away the waste products (dung, in common parlance).