This Japanese Forest Home Is Like Something Out of a Fairytale

If you have dreamed of enjoying life in your old age somewhere far from home.. breathing the fresh mountain air, at the top of a distant mountain.. in a private and cozy place, warm and cute, fairytale-like and simple, functional but ultramodern at the same time..

Well, you can stop fantasizing.. as it already exists in China!

This small home, named “Jikka,” meaning “parents’ home” in Japanese, consists of five small hut-like structures and has been designed by Japanese architect Issei Suma.

Suma’s vision was to construct “something as unembellished as a primitive hut and something as holy as a chapel.”

The tiny homes are built at various heights at the top of a mountain ridge in Shizuoka prefecture.

The house also contains an assortment of facilities, such as a spiral-shaped paddling pool and a spacious kitchen, open for the public, functioning as a lunchtime restaurant.

Back in 2015, when the home was completed, two women in their 60s, Nobuko Suma and Sachiko Fujioka, a social worker and a cook — became its first residents.

Their goal was to use it to serve the elderly in the small community, and they deliver homemade meals to them. They also serve lunch from 12-4 p.m. every afternoon.

Suma, whose son built the multipurpose home, explains:

“We were worried that in the future someone would have to take care of us. we were like-minded and had worked together in the past, we started talking about how our two families could help each other out and care for the elderly.”

The house also has a guest room, equipped with a nautilus-shaped bathtub for elderly or disabled people in need of nursing care.

Nobuko adds:

“It’s warm, the air is fresh, the water is delicious and there are plenty of vegetables. The land is old, but there are a lot of people who emigrated here so there are a lot of aspects about this place that charmed us.”

Take a look inside this magical dwarf house: