Like Alice in wonderland

Nifty: The attic can be accessed via foldable ladders attached to a door on the ceiling.

The ingenuity of the Japanese can be seen in the way they build their houses.

It was summer when I visited my future husband in his family home in Japan. That first visit was way back in 1989. I stayed in the middle room upstairs. When I woke up early on the first morning, the room was very dark. I drew the curtain but it was still dark. The sunlight was shut out by two shutters or amado (literally “rain door”). I slid open one of the door-sized glass windows and a mesh window before I opened the amado.