The Perfect Home- Japanese Architecture

At first glance, Tokyo doesn't look very promising. The buildings are mostly anonymous and international as if they could be in Frankfurt or Detroit It's hard to see what's particularly Japanese about much Japanese architecture anymore To get an idea of what Japanese architecture used to look like you have to get out of Tokyo I visited an old fashioned ryokan up in the hills surrounded by bamboo forests and a moss garden. It's the kind of place where the Japanese have come to unwind for centuries. The interiors are simply austerely furnished with paper shoji screens creating the diffuse light and sense of harmony between the interior of the building and natural world outside that are the hallmarks traditional Japanese architecture. What’s astonishing is the precision in everything. There seems to be a theme running through everything. From the food to the way people bathe to the way the room is laid out It’s a complete coherent aesthetic and a real kind of way of life. There's that feeling you sometimes get when something is so extremely beautiful, the rest of life can’t quite live up to it. As I prepare to go to sleep here, I suppose one of my regrets is why the rest of Japan and Tokyo is is not anything like this and I wonder if there is anywhere where the spirit that you see here is to be found in a more modern form or whether this is just some beautiful piece of archaic tradition which hasn't really lived on into the modern world