User:ChoiStephen
The art historian S lived just outside Oxford in a farmhouse he was remodeling and commuted to work at the university art museum in his own small automobile of indeterminate age. That car did not inspire much confidence that it could move but, once the engine got going, generated an incredible array of complex noises from every part of its body and put-putted along the country roads between the fields and the woods. The two-story home was being not only remodeled but enlarged, with S himself laying the bricks. Once every two years he writes a book on Chinese or Japanese art; once every four to five years he builds a new house with his own hands. Years later when I met him in North America, he was telling me his fourth house was about to be completed. The farmhouse he was remodeling in Oxford's suburbs was probably his second one. The walls in the add-on room had not yet been painted, and plain wood panels were fitted into the windows to prevent the cold air from coming in. The fire was blazing vigorously in the large fireplace, and the flames cast quivering shadows over objects in the dimly lit room. The outside was very quiet, but the chill grew more and more severe as the night dragged on. I was seated facing the fireplace, but my back felt the cold all down the spine.
"It seems to me the British value the psychological effects of heating over its physical effectiveness," I said.
"Are you cold?"
"No. I never get tired of watching a fire burning. We Japanese are used to sitting in airy houses made of wood and paper, even in the middle of winter. We watch the red-hot charcoal fire as we savor its psychological and poetic effects"
[Hypocrisy, A Sheep's Song - A Writer's Reminiscences of Japan and the World, Kato Shuichi]