A home within a home for snacking, relaxing, and more snacking.
Last year at Christmas time, our Japanese-language reporter Natsuno Futon built a gingerbread house using a kit she purchased at housewares store Mujirushi Ryohin/Muji. She was happy with how it came out, and she might make one again once we get to the end-of-the-year holiday season.
But before that, Natsuno has a different edible architecture project she’s been daydreaming of: building a secret fort-style house that’s big enough for her to relax inside of, and covering it in snacks.
Natsuno got this idea from a friend who’d recently done something similar in her own home. Setting a modest budget of 3,000 yen (US$19) for herself, Natsuno knew that lumber, brick, and concrete were going to be too expensive to use as building materials, so she followed in her friend’s footsteps and decided to build her snack house out of cardboard.
After a trip to home center chain Viva Home, Natsuno had three large-sized cardboard box sheets, with exterior dimensions of 54 x 39 x 46 centimeters (21.3 x 15.4 x 18.1 inches) when folded into shape. However, instead of making them into boxes, Natsuno instead took two of the sheets and taped them together, forming the four walls for her home within a home.
Since this was going to be her special spot to relax in, she made sure that she had enough floor space for a chair, and then got to work folding her remaining cardboard sheet into a gabled roof, which she secured to the rest of the structure with more tape.
Some strategic slices with a craft knife let her cut out a door and window, and she used the trimmings to fashion a fashionable faux chimney.
OK, so now she had a house, but it wasn’t a snack house yet. Unfortunately, the cardboard and tape had cost Natsuno 1,500 yen, so she was going to need to stretch the remaining half of her budget for the snacks.
As always, when you want to get the most bang for your buck, 100 yen shop Daiso is the place to go. A shopping run at the discount chain turned up a whole bunch of wallet-friendly candidates of salty and spicy snack packs, which were just the sort of flavors Natsuno was looking for, since this was going to be a mature, for-grown-ups kind of cardboard playhouse.
Natsuno could tell that she wasn’t going to have enough snacks for total coverage of her house’s exterior, though, so she decided to focus on the roof, and positioning the house in the corner of the room meant she’d be able to leave the backside bare without hurting the aesthetics.
One by one, she taped the bags of snacks to the roof panel…
…and created this charming, mouthwatering pattern.
Natsuno was feeling pretty good with her 3,000-yen snack house, but she couldn’t help feeling the walls now looked barren if she compared them to munchies-covered roof. So she did the only sensible thing and decided to just blow past her budget and go get more snacks to cover the lower sections with too.
▼ They say your house is an investment, after all, so why not put a little more money into it?
Now in splurging mode, Natsuno didn’t limit herself to the 100-yen snack packs of Daiso, and instead allowed herself to indulge in the more luxurious fare available at supermarkets or convenience stores, adding such delicacies as beef jerky and mini dried fish cake cutlets, pistachios, and little cheeses. However, with this decadence came new construction challenges, as the larger, heavier packs of non 100-yen snacks were heavier than their Daiso counterparts, and some slid down and had to be attached using a more liberal application of tape.
Finally, after about three hours of building, Natsuno’s cardboard snack house was complete, and it was time for her to step inside!
Well, it was time for her to crawl inside, but once she was in there, it felt very cozy.
The window and roof opening keep the interior from feeling too cramped or stuffy, and also let her reach outside for more snacks when she needs them. The window even allows you to hold out your cup and ask for a refill from any family members or roommates within earshot, though there’s a non-zero-percent chance that they’ll mistake you for a Japanese horror movie ghost if you don’t give them any sort of heads-up about your building project ahead of time.
And hey, if anyone needs any convincing to pour you a drink, you can always offer them their choice of a snack from your home’s exterior in exchange for the favor.
Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]