Class field trips

My Japanese class has been reading two articles on historical preservation in Kyoto, so our teachers arranged for us to take a field trip to a Kyoto Machiya.
 
Machiya are two floor Tokugawa era merchant homes that are built with a long hallway that seems like a tunnel on one side. The rooms all connect to that hallway as well as to each other. My friend Yesul is about to enter the place.

A little piece of the hallway looks something like this.
 
The hallway houses the kitchen near the back (pictured). It was considered `outside the house` so you still have to wear shoes out there.








Machiya also have two different gardens inside. One is for the low end customers to see year the shop room (of course the one closest to the street).
 
This shot is from the second floor looking down towards that first garden. Still, the better garden is in the back and for the regular customers and the shopowner`s use.






Finally, here`s a shot of one of my Japanese professors and two friends in one of the traditional rooms. The painting above us is very old and likely worth serious money.