Kamo River in fall

Last Sunday, I strolled along the Kamo River in Kyoto. The trees with red leaves are cherry trees that I saw in this spring.

Prefabricated Japanese-style rooms for Western-style houses

MSN Sankei's IZA [Japanese] has an article regarding prefabricated Japanese-style rooms.

Traditional Japanese-style rooms have tatami mats on the floor and sliding doors called shoji and fusuma that surround the rooms, but newly constructed houses in Japan don't necessarily have Japanese-style rooms, as life-styles of young people are getting Westernized. When they want to have Japanese-style rooms after they purchased houses, they have to spend much money to re-form rooms. The prefabricated Japanese-style rooms are for such people. By purchasing the prefabricated ones, they can construct Japaense-style rooms in Western-style rooms. According to the article, the companies that developed the prefabricated rooms also have plans to sell them to foreign costumers.

You can see some more photos of the rooms in the following pages. Unfortunately, they are only Japanese-language Websites; I could not find any English-language Websites for the prefabricated Japanese-style rooms. JETRO has an English language description on the prefabricated room.

Wa-Koubou, GUU (和工房 寓):
--- room 1
--- room 2
--- room 3

Sakamoto Otozou Shouten (坂本乙造商店):
--- Room 1 (You can scroll down the page by putting the mouse pointer on the arrows at the right side)
--- How to build room 1
---- Room 2 (narrow one, 1840 mm x 1845 mm)
---- How to build room 2

Nocturne by Ayaka Hirahara

Lyrics

Love, true love is to ask nothing in return
You are my destined soul mate
Your love, adoring eyes
We can see the light because we know the darkness
Everything has meaning, even campanula in the wind

Each one of us has pain and sorrow
Sheds a secret tear
But drops of your tears will fall to the earth and
Welcome new life into the world again and again with love

Love, true love is to ask nothing in return
Fated love that is meant to last
My love, your gentle gaze
A drop of your soul within me that I adore
Everything has an end, but we'll be united

My love, your gentle gaze
A drop of your soul within me that I adore
Everything has an end, but we'll be united

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The melody of the song is based around the melody to Nocturne by Chopin.

This song is now being used as the ending music of a TV drama, "風のガーデン (Garden of the Wind)", which happened to become a posthumous work of a Japanese actor Ken Ogata who passed away on October 5th.