Yakisugi (焼杉) is aesthetically pleasing and functional (they’re always linked in one way or another). Very cool. 

Related functionally is the use of rebar reenforced concrete in modern Japanese design (though less aesthetic IMO, as a recovering Tadao Ando cult member). Its prevalence and popularity is also not by accident (Kanye apparently was or is super into him), it’s cheap and very strong.

The house I currently live in was rated for just 50 years. After a little bit of renovation to that base rebar concrete infrastructure and who knows how many years we’ve added?

We left our base concrete structure open and painted it white in some places, and did other stuff over it with insulation in others. We don’t like the bleak gray. We also live on an extinct caldera in Ako (blown out volcano), which means ours house should be pretty safe from earthquakes and fire.🤞