A Three-Generation Trip Runs on Three Clocks
The hard part of a trip with grandparents, parents, and children is not the destination but the clocks. One person wakes early, one wants to stay up late, one needs an afternoon nap. Force three clocks into one itinerary and someone ends up adjusting to someone else all day long.
A whole-house kominka rental (a traditional Japanese house rented in its entirety) suits this trip because nobody has to synchronize. Does the same house hold both places to be apart and a place to come together? That is what to look for on a three-generation trip.
Assign Rooms by Clock, Not by Generation
Split the rooms into a grandparents' room, a parents' room, and a children's room, and you may run into trouble at night. Small children want to sleep with their parents; grandparents want to lie down beside the grandchildren. The better way is to assign rooms by bedtime and waking time.
- Put the early-to-bed, early-to-rise people together behind one door
- Keep the night owls' room a corridor away from the early sleepers
- Give anyone wary of stairs a room that does not require them
This works in a house with several private rooms that close with doors and a range of room sizes. At the Kazenoyado Main House in Yatsuo, all six rooms — two for four, one for three, three for two — are fully private, each with its own door. Grandparents can take a quiet two-person room while parents and children sleep side by side in a four-person room.
Or do the opposite: in a room like the tatami parlors at Oyado Kazane, where futon are laid side by side and up to six guests can share a single room, a night when everyone sleeps together can be the point of the trip. A night when grandparents and grandchildren sleep in the same room is hard to arrange at home.
The Kitchen and the Tatami Room Absorb the Difference
The first person awake can boil water without waking the whole house. Early-rising grandparents start on breakfast; a child who slept in follows the smell into the kitchen.
A tatami parlor with a tokonoma alcove and ranma transoms is a gathering place not limited by a number of chairs. Those who sit, those who sprawl, and those who climb onto a lap all fit on the same tatami. Where the rooms are built to open into one another — lift out the fusuma sliding doors and they become one long hall — everyone can eat around the table by day, then close the fusuma and sleep apart at night.
Under One Roof, It Is Fine to Be Apart
The greatest advantage of a three-generation trip is that no one has to be together all the time. While grandparents worn out from playing with the grandchildren lie down in the tatami room, the parents take the children to peer into the courtyard garden at the end of the corridor, if the house is a machiya townhouse. It is because there is time apart under the same roof that the faces are brighter when everyone comes together.
When you stay in a kominka with three generations, look at the doors, the kitchen, and the tatami room before you count the rooms. A good house is one where three clocks never have to be set to the same time.