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

Editor’s notes

A short letter from Tokyo, most weeks.

2026.10.13

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Editor’s notes

The Kitchen Wall Remembers Who Cooked Here

A Shelf of Glasses Decides How the Evening Will Go

The Bedroom Does Not Trust the Shell Around It

A Lacquered Tray Teaches You Where Things Belong

The Genkan Decides Before You Do

Every House Changed Its Clothes at the Equinox

A Kettle Decides Where the Morning Starts

A Cork Stool Keeps the Tree's Memory

The Right Lamp Admits What Time It Actually Is

The Week the World Measured Its Rooms

A Closet Chooses the Colour No One Else Sees

The Window Above the Sink Is the Only View That Matters

The Balcony Is Not Outside

The Bath Is Not Where You Get Clean

A Door That Hides the Kitchen Is Still Honest

The Genkan Remembers Your Day

A Room Is a Decision