An hour’s drive through the winding roads of Kyoto’s northern mountains gets you to a town called Miyama. This town is not famous for much, but what it does have is a little village of wonderfully preserved traditional mountain houses, called Kayabuki. The roofs of these houses are made of layers and layers of kaya, a certain kind of reed, and are particularly steep. This form helps to keep the heavy snows from piling up on the roofs and causing them to collapse. The layers (about one foot thick) are incredibly good at keeping out bugs, rain, and snow, I’m told.
The weather was perfect for a day of wandering around a small mountain village, and the residents were all out in their gardens tending to the vegetables. We entered the one tourable house, which had been restored recently to as close to its original form as possible. I particularly liked being able to climb up to the second story, a loft of sorts for storage. From there you could see that the entire roof is held together by rope; there are no nails and no notches. It smelled like haying season.
When we walked into the house, there were two old ladies in front of us. They asked the woman who owned the house, “Is it warm in the winter? (because of the roof)” She immediately answered, “No, it’s really cold! (please don’t be so naive)” City folk have no real understanding of winter in the the mountains, she seemed to be implying.
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