A room is a decision about how you want to be tired at the end of the day.

I live in forty-eight square metres in Tokyo with one good chair and far too many bowls, so I have had to mean that. I trained as an architect and left to write, which my teachers took badly. Uchi (内) means inside, and it means home: the room you come back to. The palette comes after the tiredness. So does the name on the lamp.

This is where I keep what the world's rooms are doing. Around seventy sources, read in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian, French and English: an apartment in Seoul, a house outside Taipei, a Copenhagen showroom seen from here rather than from Denmark. East first, because east is where I am sitting.

Each story is a headline, an excerpt of a few lines, one photograph and a link to whoever did the work. We never reprint the piece, and the photograph belongs to the person who took it. When a room was written up in Korean or Italian it stays in Korean or Italian here; the link takes you to the writer's own words.

I am not trying to be complete. I am trying to notice.

— Mio Tachibana, Tokyo

← Uchi Archive

Monocle

Behind the hose at Tokyo Fire Department’s elite Hyper Rescue 8 unit

10.28

On a wet autumn morning in Tokyo, four firefighters in hazmat suits are trying to pull an unconscious person from a basement room that’s filled with poisonous gas.

Japan-inspired

Read at Monocle ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Behind the hose at Tokyo Fire Department’s elite Hyper Rescue 8 unit

Related

Desalto x UNIQLO: Italian Design and Japanese Fashion in the Heart of Milan Archiproducts

Product watch: inside the ceramic craft behind the Japanese WASHLET from TOTO Hotel Designs

MAS Transforms Karimoku’s Tokyo Gallery Into an Imaginary Japanese Inn Hypebeast Design

Hong KongTokyo’s Sculptural Art Space seeen Harajuku by Kohei Nawa and Sandwich Opens Next Month Home Journal

Greetings from Kyoto Openhouse

Andersson Bell’s Flagship Tokyo Store Makes a Case for Beauty in Contrast Yatzer