muku — living with wood

Cedar floors, a hinoki bathroom, lime-plaster walls.A family holiday spent barefoot.

muku stands in Yorii, a town in the north-west of Saitama where the Arakawa runs clear between the hills.

Yorii has never been turned into a tourist town. It is quiet and plain, and that is the point. Step a little way out of your hurried ordinary life and take a deep breath among trees. The children lose themselves in wooden toys;

the grown-ups breathe in the smell of wood and let their shoulders drop. We opened this house because we wanted days like that — days when nothing much happens — to stay in a family's memory.

muku — solid wood, left as it is

▲ The nineteen-mat living room, built almost entirely from solid cedar

An interior of nothing but wood and plaster

What makes muku what it is, is the materials. We took an ordinary house and rebuilt it using natural materials alone. The floors and walls are solid cedar and hinoki cypress; the walls are finished in lime plaster. No plywood, no chemical coatings, no vinyl wallpaper — natural materials, and nothing else.

Cedar is a soft wood, and warm underfoot when you walk on it barefoot. Step into the hinoki bathroom and the scent of cypress rises with the steam. Lime plaster breathes: crisp in summer, gentle in winter, always settling the air of the room. The lights in the living room and kitchen are bamboo, made by hand by Haru, a craftsman here in Yorii.

The strength of materials themselves, and the work of human hands. This is a house where your family can feel both — through their skin, their nose, their eyes.

▲ The dining table, made by hand for this house

▲ Haru's handmade bamboo lights

The whole house to yourselves, so the time belongs to your family

muku is rented as a whole house. You will never share a floor or a bathroom with other guests. Come with small children and you needn't worry about their voices, or about them running about. Come as a group and you can talk late into the night without troubling anyone.

The ground floor is a run of tatami rooms — the ranma transoms, the shoji and fusuma screens all kept as they were — opening into a kitchen with a solid-wood island counter. Upstairs is the main bedroom, walls and floor alike in solid cedar so that the whole room smells of it, and a tatami room made for lying down in. The bathroom is hinoki throughout, walls and floor.

Families, of course. But also groups of friends, birthday parties, small workshops — the house takes those happily too.

▲ The ground-floor kitchen and island counter (the three pendant lights are Haru's work as well)

▲ The main bedroom upstairs — the room of solid wood

▲ The tatami room upstairs

▲ The handmade washstand

▲ The bathroom, hinoki throughout

※ The hinoki tub is to be installed in autumn 2026

▲ The hinoki deck

▲ The broad upstairs deck — the best seat in the house for the August fireworks

▲ The entrance, under its planting

Real materials, in a child's hands

There are a great many wooden toys and cotton soft toys at muku. Blocks, cars, a play kitchen, instruments, animals. Not the lightness of plastic or the brightness of a screen, but the weight, the smell and the grain of the thing itself.

Children's senses are finer than we tend to assume. A wooden toy is safe in the mouth, and every time they lick it or bite it, they are learning what a material is. A day spent in rooms where the floor, the walls and the toys are all made of natural things is an experience most children don't easily get at home.

▲ Wooden toys, and plenty of them

The town and the country around it, for the whole family Yorii has no famous sight. But that is exactly why the plain cleanness of the place is still here. Give yourself an hour before or after your stay, and go and look.

▲ A day by the Arakawa and its stony banks

▲ Shiroyama Inari Shrine, in the grounds of the Hachigata Castle ruins

▲ Suzumenomiya Park, lovely in its autumn colour

▲ A little further out: Nagatoro and Chichibu

Eating in Yorii

Imaiya, in business for more than a hundred years, for tare-katsudon — pork cutlet on rice with a sweet-savoury sauce. Yorii yakitori, said to have begun here, where the skewers are grilled pork cheek. Kadoguchi Yorii, a daytime drinking café with a shower room, where runners, cyclists and hikers gather.

Carinho, a café with bodywork and yoga, for very good curry and carefully made coffee. Plain, good places, scattered all over the town.

▲ The curry at Carinho

▲ Yorii's katsudon

A day lived with wood becomes a family memory

You sleep deeply, wrapped in cedar and hinoki. You wake in the morning to light coming through onto a lime-plaster wall. The children play with wooden toys; the grown-ups look out at the green beyond the window and take their time making tea.

Nothing special happens. But we hope that a day of simply living with wood stays with your family for a long time. muku is an inn made for that kind of time.

FACILITY

Name : muku — Kito-Kurasu-Yado (the inn where you live with wood)

Address : 787-10 Yorii, Yorii-machi, Osato-gun, Saitama 369-1203, Japan

Access : 8 minutes' walk from Yorii Station / 4 minutes from Tamayodo Station

Email : muku.yorii@gmail.com

Check-in : 15:00–23:00 (self check-in)

Check-out : by 10:00