Traditional wooden townhouses called machiya could once be found throughout Japan and were especially common in cities such as Kyoto and Nara in Kansai, as well as Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture.
More recently, however, their days appear to be numbered, and, as anyone who has spent any time in one can attest, they are incredibly difficult to maintain. We'll get to this shortly but, first, let's examine what made these townhouses so popular in the first place.
A typical machiya features earthen walls and tile roofs, with a retail space located at the front of the building separated from a living space and a palm-sized courtyard garden called a tsuboniwa.