How to build a Japanese house in Minecraft

You would very much like to learn how to build a Japanese house in Minecraft as oriental culture has always fascinated you and the idea of ​​replicating its architectural style also on the famous Mojang game strongly stimulates your creativity. However, you would need some more precise references to start building it. Well, in the project that I will show you shortly, I recreated the typical environments of a rural house, the so-called minka , consisting of a raised outdoor space, an entrance (or genkan– where traditionally you take off your shoes before entering the house) and from the actual living space, trying to remain as faithful as possible to its traditional aesthetic canons (this does not mean, of course, that you can revisit the instructions as you wish. that I am about to provide you to build one that best reflects your ideal).

To facilitate the task, however, I have divided the guide into two chapters: in the first I will show you the type of materials you need to make the structure, also showing you how to find them in case you want to proceed in survival mode (without prejudice to that you can switch to creative at any time to access its infinite inventory), after which I will show you the various steps to put it all together. Finally, consider that the following instructions apply to any edition of the game and any platform.

Index

• Materials
• Procedure

Materials

There are not many materials that you will need for this project and fortunately they are all present in large quantities in nature in the various biomes, or can be crafted with a few essential tools .

To start with, get several units of stone , which will be useful for tracing the perimeter of the house: to obtain them you can use a pickaxe and bake the crushed stone with it in a furnace .

The wood is one of the materials typically used in this type of constructions: in this project I have made use of ‘ bark fir to create pylons , but you can prefer any other type of timber based on the appearance and the color you want to give at home. As you probably already know, its blocks are easily obtained from the trunks of the respective trees.

A part of these will subsequently be transformed into boards : to do this, simply open a workbench and place a block of wood in the center, which generates 4 units of boards . Finally, the latter can be transformed into slabs , essential for creating the flooring , by placing 3 blocks on the lower side of the work table interface.

From the wood you can also get the stairs which, as you will see shortly, are essential to assemble the roof , but also the hatches , which I used to make the original decorative panels : to obtain the latter you simply have to place 6 blocks of wooden planks (in this case I preferred oak for both color and design) always on the workbench, arranging them so as to leave the first row empty.

The classic rice paper panels can be simulated with any white material : for the occasion I used quartz blocks , but if you play in survival mode and prefer not to go to the fearsome dimension of the Nether to recover them, you can consider using the white concrete or wool , which can be obtained by shearing a sheep with shears (just place 2 units of iron ingots on a workbench , which in turn are obtained by placing the raw iron in a furnace ).

Finally, you will also need glass , thanks to which you can arrange beautiful windows oriented towards the surrounding nature.

Procedure

Now that you have found all the materials necessary for the construction of your next Japanese house, we can move on to its material realization: the procedure , as you will be able to verify yourself shortly, is very simple and intuitive and does not require the knowledge of any particular construction technique. .

First of all it is advisable to choose a flat area large enough to accommodate the house and to delimit its perimeter : to do this, dig the earth blocks and make three adjacent rectangles, respectively of 13 × 9 (internal area), 7 × 6 (genkan ) and 5 × 5 again (patio), then fill the path with stone .

Traditional Japanese houses are often raised : to recreate this particular feature, he begins to place two overlapping blocks of barked fir wood at the corners of the perimeter , then, starting from the highest one, he redesigns the perimeter of the house with the same material.

Once this is done, fill the interior spaces with light spruce slabs , leaning against the outline and making sure to position them high, in order to create a raised floor . In front of what will constitute the entrance to the dwelling, therefore, centrally position two adjacent blocks of fir wood stairs , inserting an additional block of fir wood as a support for the higher rungs.

Continue to erect the debarked fir pylons by overlapping another 4 units at the vertices to reach a total height of 6 blocks , then, starting from each corner of the largest rectangle, leave three empty spaces and raise a new one of equal height, proceeding in this way along the entire edge. At the end, join the various pylons also in the upper part by juxtaposing other blocks of the same material, in order to complete the framework of the project.

Now, to fill the empty spaces of the perimeter walls you have different solutions that you can alternate according to your personal tastes: for example, you could insert white quartz blocks to imitate the rice paper panels , interspersed with large windows ( made up of simple glass blocks) widely used in oriental culture, as they combine to recreate a common thread with the external environment.

Finally, an expedient that I personally consider very elegant and that strongly recalls motifs typical of the Far East, is to place hatches : once positioned in the lower part with respect to the adjacent blocks, you just need to open them (for example with the right mouse button ) to make highly decorative wood panels .

At this point, it is advisable to complete the roof: the original slope typical of traditional Japanese houses can be recreated by inserting overturned wooden stairs along the high perimeter . Once the outline has been completed, an internal edge of wooden plates must be applied which will form the support base for another series of stairs, which, this time, will be placed in the correct direction.

Proceed in the same way, level after level, until you reach the top. Also with regard to the other two rooms, namely the genkan and the patio , you can easily follow the same instructions: since their dimensions are smaller, the roof will consequently be lower, creating differences in height that recall the typical constructions of the Rising Sun .

If you wish, you can expand the patio and make it run along the entire perimeter of the house, always using the hatches as an original railing . Finally, place lanterns in the entrances of the various rooms to give that final Zen touch that will make everything even more characteristic. Now all you have to do is furnish the interiors: surely you can find several interesting ideas in this dedicated guide of mine .

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this tutorial of mine: if so, staying on the subject, I think you may also be interested in the guide in which I explain how to build a temple in Minecraft , in which I explain how to build temples of different types, including the Japanese one : maybe you could even think of recreating an entire village on the imprint of traditional Japanese ones. As usual in Mojang’s title, the possibilities are almost endless!