Jan.13.2010 Traditional Houses

Here i will share about traditional houses in a few countries...

*Traditional Japanese Houses have one storey and are made of wood. There are movable paper walls between the rooms and there are no chairs or beds. There are cushions or straw mats called tatami around low tables. At night, these rooms become bedrooms. Most Japanese people now live in concrete blocks of flats and modern brick houses. But in Japanese homes, there`s still one room for traditional tatami rooms.

*Traditional Irish Cottages are made of stone and have straw roofs. They are usually white and have only one storey. There are not many windows because glass was expensive in the past and there was a tax on windows in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the old days, cows lived inside the houses with the people! Nowadays, a lot of these old cottages are romantic holiday homes.

*Mongolian Gers (or Yurts) are round tents made of cloth and wooden poles. Inside a ger, there are different living areas. In the middle of the tent, there is a stove and a chimney. There is a kitchen and a sitting area next to the stove. Mongolians needed gers because they moved with their herd of cows. Nowadays, most people still live in gers because they are warm, portable, comfortable and cheap. Around the capital, Ulan Bataar, there are large suburbs of gers.

* Wigwams or Teepees were portable because a lot of native Americans were hunters and followed the herds of buffalo. A Wigwam is simple to put up and take down. There are ten wooden poles with animal skins over them. There are beautiful paintings on the skins. Nowadays, people only use them at festivals and for special ceremonies.