Over the river and through the woods

I have been staying with my friend Mayo and her family in the center of Kyoto for the past two days. They live in a wonderful traditional style house with a family-run shop in the front and the living quarters in the back. The middle is an area that is a cross between indoors and outdoors: it has a roof and a kitchen, but there are also little gardens and stone floor walkways. Her family makes traditional bamboo blinds called "sudare."

Anyway, we went out to her grandmother's house in Shiga prefecture yesterday. I was led to believe that her grandmother lived on a farm, but in fact, she just had a really big garden. What really intrigued me was the house. More than Mayo's it was really a traditional Japanese house. In fact, it was like lots of little houses within one big rambling house. There were outdoor passages all over that led to sections of the house with two or three rooms and their own little gardens. It was both fun and annoying that everytime I wanted to go to a different part of the house I had to take on and off the offered slippers and sandals at least three times.