Hida Camp 

Japan Study Abroad 2026

By Dominic Peracciny

Introduction

This past summer, I studied abroad in Japan with 10 other students. We were based in Tokyo, squished together in the tiniest of apartments – 21 square meters, about 225 square feet. Two people to a room. One slept on a twin bed, the other on a mat on the floor just a couple feet away. A bit of an awkward hierarchy. For us, it took some getting used to, but this way of living was very common amongst the Tokyoites. Jam-packed. The whole city seemed to operate this way – people, buildings, trains, bikes, signs, vending machines. Space is limited, so it is used precisely. Everything has its place. Nothing wasted. Not space, not time, not movement. But, for one week, we abandoned it. Just as we were getting used to the tight-quarters of the city, we were getting thrown into the countryside. The countryside is more my speed. A literal breath of fresh air was what I was craving. I was ready for what they called “Hida Camp”. 

We traveled on the Shinkansen – one of Japan’s high-speed railways. We headed into the Japanese Alps at about 300 miles per hour. It took only two hours to travel 228 miles. Our destination was a small town called Hida. Hida is known for a few things – mountains famous for skiing, street drains so clean that koi fish swim in them, beef so marbled it dissolves in your mouth – but we were there for the woodworkers, the tradesmen. 

Initially, when I thought of Japan, I envisioned Tokyo – neon lights reflecting on rain puddles of concrete streets, decked-out cars drifting through the city, a cyber punk hub. This image was engraved into my head before even getting there. For the first two weeks, that is more or less what we got. But as we got closer and closer to Hida, the tall buildings began to dissipate. The density began to weaken. The noise began to subside. Bright green mountains shot up in place of skyscrapers. Rice paddy fields and vegetable gardens filled in the gaps between buildings. It began to resemble where I grew up. I felt a sense of ease. 

Now, this is not to say that Hida was disconnected from the precision we had seen in Tokyo. It simply showed up differently. For centuries, the region has been associated with timber, carpentry and some of Japan’s most sophisticated and sometimes mysterious traditions of joinery. Precision and innovation was in the long history of what people made and the knowledge they shared. It reflected the landscape around them. The buildings were made from timber, harvested from the surrounding mountains. The skills had been passed down for generations. Food came from the rice fields, farms and rivers scattered throughout the valleys. Even the traditions seemed to grow from what was immediately available. There was a closeness between the land, the materials and the people who knew how to use them. What surrounded Hida wasn't simply the backdrop to the town. It was what shaped it.

1. materials

For us, Hida was where we were going to learn from a man named Takuma. Takuma describes himself as a “hyakushō”, which translates to “a hundred names”. The way it was explained to us was a person of a hundred skills – a jack of all trades. He is the kind of person who makes a group of architecture students reconsider everything they know and how useful they really are.  For the next week, we followed him around, watched him work and occasionally, when we understood how to do what he was doing, we helped him. We were getting a little taste of that transfer of knowledge. We were his apprentices. FabCafe, the place we were calling home for the week, was located within the smaller town about 10 minutes from the base of the mountains. It was a typical cafe, but also housed fabrication equipment and tools – hence the name. At the center of the space was a small kitchen, where they prepared our breakfast every morning, followed by their typical lunch service. A counter faced the front door, serving coffee and tea. Dispersed around were lasercutters, printers, stationery of all sorts, saws, a small wood shop tucked in the back, large tables to gather, small tables to isolate. A quirky combination that seemed to collate some of the most interesting people around. Next to the entrance was a set of steep stairs. One would have to grab the next step in front of them with their hands and literally climb up – just like a mountain. The second floor consisted of three larger bedrooms. Each with tatami floors, 3 mats paired with a thick comforter and one pillow, a small refrigerator, a newly installed air conditioner, large windows that looked out to the front of the building and another set of windows on the back side that looked out to the inside of the cafe. My typical morning consisted of climbing down the stairs, through the dining area of the cafe, with a handful of clean clothes and toiletries, down a long hallway that led me to the communal showers and toilets in the back. As you might imagine, that could potentially lead to quite an awkward scenario. So, we all made sure to finish up our personal routines either before the place opened at 10am, or after they closed. The guys showered in the morning, the girls at night. 

A man named Daiki stayed with us during the week. At this point in the trip, he was already a friend. Officially, he was there because he helps run FabCafe. We initially met him in Tokyo, as FabCafe has several locations – the one in Tokyo being where we met daily for our studio classes. Unofficially, Daiki was there to make sure us Americans didn’t disappear into rural Japan.

The building formed a central outdoor courtyard. That courtyard shortly became our workplace. But, before we could build anything, we had to meet the man we had all been hearing about – Takuma. One morning, all of us packed into 3 small vehicles and met him at the edge of a forest along the base of the mountains. Here, we would be shown the materials that we are going to use and where they came from. 

Nick was our professor and the man responsible for getting all of us here in the first place. So, if you're wondering how eleven students found themselves standing in the forest watching a man split bamboo – you could blame, and thank, Nick.

You may be asking, what exactly is Hida Camp? Well, it isn’t exactly a camp. And it isn’t like traditional architecture school. We weren’t sitting in a classroom. Despite the name, we weren’t staying in any tents either. I guess it was like an educational boot camp. Except, instead of someone telling you to run faster, someone was telling you to reconsider things you normally don't think twice about, by experiencing a different culture. Either equally as challenging. Where does this bamboo come from? How do you build something structural with such natural materials? How does this man somehow know how to do all of this stuff?Why don’t we do stuff like this in the US? For a week, the normal relationship between drawing something and making something that we knew, got a little blurry.

On the edge of the forest, after a short peaceful walk through a trail, we watched bamboo become split into pieces. Those pieces would get transported to where we were staying. Eventually, those pieces would become something else entirely. Mostly, we watched this guy in awe for a week as he blew our minds. He also looked pretty badass while doing it. We were shown how to split a long, thick piece of bamboo using this thing which looked like an oversized apple slicer. This was all done by hand. He put the bamboo between his legs, staggering over it, placed the slicer at one end of the bamboo, hammered it in slightly and then grabbed it by the handles. He pulled backward, like rowing a boat, and between each tug, he rocked the slicer slightly forward to gain enough momentum to get it to glide through. After about ten tugs, the slicer came out of the opposite end and left six smaller pieces on the ground below. Takuma, of course, made it look effortless. So naturally, we figured we could do it too. He let us have a try. 

The bamboo was a lot less cooperative than it looked. We struggled to get the slicer even a quarter of the way through. But with enough people, enough force, enough embarrassment and probably twice as many tugs, Takuma decided it was time to step in and give us some tips. 

After some guidance, we were able to get our own set of smaller pieces. After watching my classmates have such a difficult time and slightly embarrass themselves, my interest in trying it disappeared. We then switched to a slicer with twice as many blades, creating twice as many pieces. Apparently, we thought we had the hang of it. This one was harder – a lot harder. In fact, so hard that we never actually got it all the way through. I watched each person hand the task off to someone else about six times. Each stepped up to the task hoping they could be the one to conquer it. This was easily one of the most entertaining parts of the whole trip. The final time, it was handed back to Takuma. Even the master himself couldn’t get the piece fully split. So, at this point he knew it wasn’t just us armatures. Maybe it was the bamboo. He resulted to the saw to cut it short – problem solved. 

We bundled up what we had managed to cut, put it into the bed of Takuma’s truck and packed ourselves back into the tiny vehicles in which we came. We headed back to where all of this bamboo would eventually become something – the courtyard of FabCafe. 

2. knots

So, what exactly were we building? The plan was a canopy of sorts. Something that would cover a small portion of the courtyard. Bamboo and rope for the structure, more rope anchoring it to two trees, finished with a layer of thatch. Simple enough. Or at least it sounded simple.

Takuma parked his truck along a side street, near an entrance to the courtyard. We all helped bring in the materials, requiring multiple trips. Our inventory consisted of the bamboo we had split, about 20-to-30 pieces, roughly two-to-three inches wide by twelve-to-thirteen feet long. Two bundles of rope, one thick, one thin. Multiple bundles of dried straw, which would eventually become the thatch.

Before Takuma was willing to let us loose with the limited materials, there were a few things we needed to learn. Namely, how to tie the whole thing together. So, he started with the basics. A tutorial of a handful of knots he uses regularly – each one meant for a particular connection and a particular job. No screws. No bolts. Just rope and knowing what you're doing. Which, at this point, we did not.

Some of us gathered on a small bench, some sat on the loose gravel, others on a concrete stoop. In front of us was Takuma. A white bucket hat covered his hair. A clean, white, long-sleeved button-down with his logo on the chest pocket. A navy-blue nylon sleeve covered both wrists. Thick brown pants and a pair of tabi shoes on his feet. Two white gardening gloves on his hands, but a silver Casio watch poked out. A leather tool belt wrapped his waist, holding a pair of scissors and a measuring tape for quick access. Not only did he have impressive skills, he also had impressive style.

He showed us six knots.

The first connected two perpendicular pieces of bamboo, forming a cross. Another extended two pieces by overlapping them and wrapping them tightly together. A couple were specifically for attaching thatch. One was described as the “easy version” of another. The last was a bonus – an adjustable knot that could slide along a piece of rope to be tightened or loosened.

In about 10 minutes, Takuma casually cranked all of these out.

Takuma made his way through them one after another. Wrap, loop, pull, tighten. Then onto the next. By the time he finished the sixth, I was still trying to remember the first. He held up the final conglomeration of bamboo, rope and straw with a smile on his face.

“OK,” he said.

Signaling to us that it was our turn.

A guest, Junichiro, sitting with us, translated for Takuma as he demonstrated. He had been introduced to us about a week prior over a Zoom call. He and Nick had been developing a digital modeling tool specifically for knots. Behind the scenes, we used it to digitally reconstruct the same knots Takuma was tying in front of us, along with as many others as we could find online. These would eventually create a database – a digital catalog where a knot could be recreated, adjusted and potentially incorporated into a 3D model.

So, while Takuma worked with rope and bamboo, we were trying to understand the same logic through a computer. Two very different ways of representing the same thing. One us students were familiar with – digital – and one Takuma was familiar with – physical.

It became an interesting translation: from Takuma's hands, to ours, to the computer, and eventually back into something we would build. For many of us, including myself, it was our first time seeing the client, craftsman, architect relationship unfold.

Now that we understood the basics, or at least thought we did, it was our turn.

As we had experienced earlier in the day, watching someone do something and actually doing it yourself are two very different things. We each grabbed a small piece of rope and gathered around a spare piece of bamboo. This time, instead of trying to remember all six, we focused on the one we would need first.

As expected, we needed to be constantly reminded of each step.

Over, under, around, through that loop, no, not that loop, now pull that end, no, not that end, OK, good.

Eventually, something resembling Takuma's knot began to appear.

The one we had been practicing was called the “perimeter knot.”

Perimeter of what?

Well, we had the same question at first.

3. net

Prior to coming to Hida, Nick had been working on several designs of what the canopy could look like. We had a rough idea of what he and FabCafe wanted. A double-curved structure, held in tension by a rope net, with two high points connected to the nearby exterior walls of the building and two low points connected to the trees. On top of that, a layer of thatch would be placed.

That was the drawing. Now, we had to actually figure out how to build it.

We decided to use the bamboo we split earlier to form the perimeter. Eight pieces, doubled up to create four sides of a large diamond. The corners were the tricky part. After some scrambling around the wood shop in the back, we made four triangular joints out of scrap wood. Each created the angle at which two sides of the diamond would meet. Small holes were drilled through the wood, copper wire was threaded through, wrapped around the bamboo and twisted tight with a pair of pliers. A larger hole through the center of each joint would eventually allow us to anchor the whole thing into place.

It took some brainstorming and innovation, and for a bit, we were grabbing scraps and tools from around the wood shop trying to figure out what might work. But, eventually, we had our diamond.

Now the perimeter knot made a little more sense.

This knot would connect the ropes of the net to the bamboo perimeter. We used yellow tape to mark the exact placement of each one along the sides. Since we now knew this knot, us students were actually able to knock this part out ourselves. We grabbed pieces of the thick rope, picked a piece of tape, knelt down and tied what we had just practiced.

Then came the inspection.

Takuma went around to approve our work, similar to presenting your dish at culinary school. Most were good. Some weren't quite up to his standards. Those were re-tied by Takuma as the person responsible sat there slightly ashamed.

Eventually, every piece of tape had a rope tied to it in the correct way.

Now, it was time to actually make the net.

Each rope needed to travel from one side of the diamond to the other, crossing several others along the way. Every one of those intersections needed to be tied together using another kind of knot – the inner knot.

There were a lot of intersections.

So, there were a lot of knots.

The annoying part was that we couldn't just tie them wherever we wanted. Every intersection had a specific location. Why? Because this canopy was intended to achieve a double-curvature. Once raised, all of these ropes would be pulled into tension to create that shape. If the intersections were in the wrong places, the final curve would be wrong too.

Originally, Nick's design actually had about double the amount of rope, intersections and knots. Luckily, he realized how tedious this was going to be before we did and re-adjusted the design to minimize the time and material it would take.

Thank you Nick.

We also had a cheat sheet. It was basically an image of the finished net with all the measurements between the intersections listed. Takuma started with the first one, tying it loosely. One of us read the measurement off the sheet. Another took a ruler to the rope and marked where the next intersection needed to land. Once everything looked right, Takuma tightened it completely.

The first measurements were crossed off.

Read the measurement. Takuma ties. Measure. Confirm. Tighten. Cross it off.

That was the process.

Somewhere around the first few knots, I think Takuma realized how much of a headache this was going to be.

Then, another problem arose.

We could measure the distance while the knot was loose and get it exact. But, when Takuma tightened it, the measurement changed. As the rope pulled through itself and everything cinched together, the final length became slightly different from what we had just measured.

So technically, the measurement could be right at first, but wrong when we were done.

Takuma realized this almost immediately.

He didn't say it. We could see him calculating it in his head.

The part that blew our minds was how quickly he changed his technique to account for it. After a few tries, he seemed to know how much the rope would change once everything was fully tightened. We could tell him the final measurement we needed and somehow, he knew where to place the loose knot so that when he pulled it tight, it landed where it was supposed to.

Crazy.

We had the cheat sheet. We had the measurements. We had the ruler. Takuma had an amazing mind.

It was moments like this that made us realize that the relationship between the drawing and the hand required a certain kind of knowledge and skill that we weren't taught in school. The way we want a material to act, and the way the material wants to act aren't always the same. There was a bit of unpredictability. Takuma knew how to account for it.

Oh, and by the way, at this point we had about four hours until sunset. And we needed to have the whole thing finished by the following night.

So, we kept going.

Someone read off the cheat sheet. Takuma tied. Someone took the ruler to the rope. We confirmed. He tightened. Cross it off.

Rinse and repeat.

This took a long time. In fact, it took so long that by the end of the day, we still weren't finished. So, we called it quits and continued the next morning.

The next day wasn't much different. We switched on and off helping Takuma with the measurements. Someone called out the numbers. He tied. Someone took the ruler to the rope. We confirmed. He tightened.

Again.

And again.

And again.

I hope by now, you realize how repetitive this was.

Eventually, after several hours, we got to the last measurement on the sheet. Takuma tightened the final piece of rope onto the final piece of exposed tape. He sighed, took a breath and shouted in relief that it was over.

The finished net sat on the stones of the courtyard.

We all gathered around admiring it.

It was time to raise it into place.

We took the large spool of thick rope and threaded it through the hole at each corner of the diamond. One corner was anchored along the rafter of the roof. Another to the opposite side of the building. The remaining two wrapped around the trunks of the trees.

Then, we started pulling.

Slowly, the diamond lifted off the stones. What had spent the last two days laying flat on the ground began to take the shape we had been looking at on Nick's computer. We moved between the four corners, adjusting each anchor point until the whole thing was as tensioned as we could possibly get it.

Eventually, it was up.

“I want to put some thatch on this thing,” one of the students said.

Just like that, we moved onto the next step.

4. thatch

The thatch we were using was dried straw. We never actually saw where it was harvested, but we knew it was local. The entire area surrounding Hida was filled with fields. It could've come from any one of them. The straw was a bright, golden tan color. I knew this color from home. Large fields in the fall, dried up and rolled into hay bales. The kind of color that glows in the sunset and contrasts perfectly with a blue sky. It smelled natural. Clean. It was dry and prickly to the hand, tied together in medium-sized bundles. We must've had about twenty or so to work with.

We were only applying a thin layer of thatch, probably about three inches thick, so we didn't need too much. This wasn't a house. It didn't need to keep anyone warm or completely dry. It was an outdoor canopy. Something meant to provide shade, coverage, refuge, a place to sit or lay. 

Similarly to the knots, this part began with another demonstration.

We already knew the knot that would attach the thatch to the net. Takuma had shown it to us earlier. Now, we needed to understand the material itself.

Once again, we circled around Takuma and listened. He held a golden handful of thatch in one hand, lifting it into the air in front of him. His other arm rose above his head, arched, his palm flat, and swooped down towards the bundle. Takuma was speaking Japanese, so for us this felt like a game of charades. What exactly was he showing?

“Rain,” Daiki said, translating for him.

The thatch had a root end and a head end. The head needed to face upwards and the root downwards – resembling how it grew. The reason was rain. In order for water to flow off, and into the thatch correctly, its orientation had to be right. When placing a handful onto the structure, you had to think about where the rain would come from, how it would hit the straw and where it needed to go from there. The water should drain downward, off the low edges of the canopy. 

Simple enough on a normal roof. But, ours wasn't exactly a normal roof.

Because the net was doubly curved, the orientation of the thatch needed to change depending on where it was placed. From the two high points, it would point downwards. Towards the middle, it would begin to spiral outward, towards either low side. The shape of the net determined the direction of the material. And the direction of the material determined where the rain would go.

Takuma walked over to the suspended net and placed his handful of thatch onto it. He sawed off another piece of bamboo and laid it across the net, following the direction of one of the ropes. The bamboo overlapped the head of the bundle, sandwiching the thatch between itself and the rope net below. He pulled the scissors from his tool belt, snipped a short piece of the thin rope and used the third knot he had shown us earlier. The rope went through the thatch, under the rope net, back through, over the piece of bamboo, bracing everything together and finished with a tight knot.

That was it. Now we just had to do that until the entire thing was covered.

Once again, it was our turn to try. We split into two groups, each taking one of the two low sides of the canopy, which sat at about shoulder height. We grabbed handfuls of thatch and slipped them between the bracing bamboo and the net. Some of us got it on the first try. Others didn't. But, after a couple tries, we all got it down.

Thankfully, this went much faster than the net.

We could all work at the same time. Handful after handful, the lower edges of the net began to disappear. The diamond that we had spent the last two days measuring and tying was slowly being covered. Eventually, though, we reached a point where none of us could reach anymore.

So, Takuma grabbed a ladder.

From there, the rest was mostly his. At a pretty good pace, he began covering more and more of the net. Rotating, snipping, sawing, tying. I could tell he enjoyed this process much more than the previous one. I think the rest of us did too. Watching him work felt a little like watching an artist sculpt. Or maybe a chef. A surgeon. A professional dancer. There were no wasted movements. Every movement seemed to have a purpose. One hand grabbed the straw while the other reached for the scissors. Cut. Place. Tie. Rotate.

We couldn't do much of the actual construction anymore, but we could at least make ourselves useful. Someone would hand him some rope. Someone else a handful of thatch. Maybe a cigarette. I can't remember. Whatever kept him moving.

As Takuma continued working, something else started happening around us.

Nick and Daiki had arranged a sort of exhibition at FabCafe. Locals began showing up. Guests who happened to be visiting Hida came through. People who were probably just stopping in for a cup of coffee or something to eat wandered into the courtyard. Before long, there were people everywhere. Some stood around watching Takuma work. Some talked with us. Some shared about the things they were making and working on themselves.

Earlier, I described FabCafe as a place that seemed to collate some of the most interesting people around. This was one of those moments where you could actually see that happening. What had been our little workplace for the past week had turned into a gathering place.

Takuma kept working above us. 

After a while, he had made enough progress that it became difficult to see exactly what he was doing from underneath. So, naturally, I wanted a better view.

I asked Sheui, one of the people from FabCafe, if we could get onto the roof. Him and I walked towards the wood shop in the back and opened a door to a set of really old stairs. They looked like they could've fallen apart at any moment. Apparently, they led to the roof. So, up we went.

We opened the door at the top, walked out and sat along the edge.

From up there, I could finally see the whole thing.

Takuma, glowing in his white uniform, seemed to be hovering over this golden surface below him. He was actually standing on a ladder, but from where we were sitting you could barely see it. Around him were probably twenty people. Some talking with one another. Some watching him. Some looking up at the canopy. 

It was awesome.

I headed back down when Takuma reached the final section. The guests had all left. Us students, Nick, Daiki, Sheui, began gathering around again. He attached the last few handfuls of straw and climbed down from his ladder.

He pulled the scissors from his tool belt one last time and began trimming away the loose pieces of thatch sticking out around the edges. A snip here. Another there. Slowly cleaning up the shape until he was satisfied.

Then, it was finished.

We wandered around it. Under it. We touched it, we could smell it in the air, we took pictures of it and looked at it from probably every angle possible. What had started as bamboo laying on the edge of a forest was now suspended above the courtyard. Bamboo, rope, some pieces of scrap wood, copper wire and dried straw. Somehow, it had all become one.

Before we were done, we took one final picture underneath it.

Eleven students. Our professor. Takuma.

Thirteen of us, jam-packed underneath a canopy smaller than the apartments we had left behind in Tokyo.

That night we had a group dinner, made by Mother, a woman who helps run FabCafe. She had made one of our new favorite dishes we discovered while in Hida – yakisoba – along with many other delicious foods. Prior, we had all run to the local liquor store. So, we had a wonderful meal, some quenching and well-deserved beverages, and some great conversation about the canopy experience.

After the meal, some of us wandered back out into the dark courtyard. We grabbed one of the benches, dragged it across the stones and placed it underneath the canopy. We sat there for a while. No more measuring. No more tying knots. No more cutting bamboo or handing Takuma pieces of thatch. We just sat underneath it.

For the past couple days, we had been so focused on the process – measuring, tying, cutting, drawing – that I don't think we had really thought about what it would be like to actually use the thing.

It had finally become a place.

conclusion

The next morning, we went outside to see that it had rained overnight. The stones throughout the courtyard were dark and wet. Underneath the canopy was dry.

A week earlier, the bamboo was probably still somewhere in the forest. The rice straw was most likely sitting in bundles, harvested from one of the many fields. The rope was still wrapped around a spool. The canopy itself was nothing more than a rough drawing on Nick's computer and an idea of what it could become.

I don't think myself or any of my classmates became particularly good at splitting bamboo. Most of our knots needed retying, and most of the thing was ultimately done by Takuma. But, we understood it. Or at least, we understood it a little more than we did before. We understood that something which looked relatively simple when finished, wasn't simple at all.

And we understood why someone like Takuma was so good at it.

At the beginning of the week, Takuma introduced himself as a hyakushō – a person of a hundred skills. At the time, I thought it was a pretty interesting way for someone to describe themselves. By the end of the week, I was starting to wonder what the other ninety skills were.