Narrow Japanese Buildings

Japan squeezes about half the population of the U.S. into a country the size of California, which alone would seem to guarantee that people would be squashed together a bit. On top of this is the fact that so much of the land here is mountainous, and the Japanese have an odd cultural dislike for living on mountains, which forces people even closer together in the cities. This scarcity of land tends to make for some oddly-shaped buildings, and as a foreigner it’s fun to pick out some of the more bizarrely-shaped structures, some of which are so narrow you wonder how they keep from falling over. Creating beautiful living spaces for small plots of land (called kyosho jutaku) is a highly developed art form in Japan, and there are many architects and building companies who specialize in designing homes that take up very little land yet are unbelievably spacious inside.

There are some pretty funky-looking buildings in Japan.