Make Your Own Mini Tatami Mat in a Nara Townhouse, with Tea and Sweets

Tatami is the floor almost every traditional Japanese room is measured in, and yet very few visitors ever see how one is put together. This hour-long workshop takes place inside a machiya townhouse in Nara and hands you the materials directly: a woven igusa rush surface, the cloth edging, and the tools used to fix one to the other. You leave with a miniature tatami mat that you made yourself, small enough to carry home in a suitcase and usable as a coaster, a stand or a display piece.

The first thing you notice is the smell. Igusa, the soft rush the mat surface is woven from, gives off a grassy, faintly sweet scent that is one of the most recognisable smells in Japan and fades as a mat ages, which is why a freshly laid tatami room is such a distinctive experience. Your host explains where the craft came from, how mat sizes came to define room dimensions, and why the edging cloth was once a marker of rank. Japanese tea and seasonal sweets are served during the session, so there is a pause to sit with the material rather than rush the making.

At an hour, this fits neatly either side of a temple morning, and it is a genuinely different use of time in a city where nearly every other activity is deer and Buddhist architecture. It works well for families, for rainy afternoons, and for travellers who would rather take home something they built than something they bought. No craft experience is needed and all materials are provided.