If you were to drive for two hours north-west from Tokyo to the mountain resort of Karuizawa and then go down into the woods there, you might be surprised and perhaps even a bit discomfited to come across this little black cottage squatting in the sylvan landscape. Like some dark witch's hovel, it has a curiously unnerving aura. No communing with nature here; no gently weathering cedar or faux rusticity. The pitch black corrugated cladding that shrouds the walls suggests an emphatic impermeability. It could have dropped from the sky and be anywhere.
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