Living With Heat, Paying the Price If you’ve spent a summer in Japan, you already know: it gets hot. But it’s not just the kind of dry, baking heat you find in deserts—it’s humid, sticky, and persistent. In the countryside, I’ve often wrapped a wet
Why I Chose to Install Solar Panels When I first moved out to the edge of the mountains in rural Tottori, electricity was the one thing that still tied me to the grid. Everything else — water, food, heat — I had figured out in
The switch that talks back Walk into a Japanese home on a rainy evening, and you might spot a dim orange glow by the door. That’s no decoration. It’s a pilot switch, quietly letting you know that something’s on—usually a light outside or in a
When old wood meets new light I bought a house most people wouldn’t touch. Not because I’m reckless, but because I saw something still alive under the dust and cracked siding. Back in 2016, I was working contracts in the mountains of Gifu, and the
