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

Spoon & TamagoJapan

Yuka Numata’s Haunting Sculptures of Children, Made from Fishing Line and Beads, Installed at Abandoned Elementary School

September 18

When you enter the classroom of an elementary school, you might expect to hear laughter and yelps of excitement.

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Yuka Numata’s Haunting Sculptures of Children, Made from Fishing Line and Beads, Installed at Abandoned Elementary School

More from Spoon & Tamago on Uchi

JapanKawaii Buildings, as Seen Through the Lens of Urban Photographer Ken Ohyama Spoon & Tamago

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Japan人々の心に、栄養を。最新鋭の焙煎機×圧巻の内装で、 建築都市・高松を体感するカフェ。 Casa Brutus

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