Roof lines: Lanyu Island, southern France, rural Japan

In the last Opposable I said I’d post houses on Lanyu Island (top) and contrast them with Bruges, but then I thought the shots here made more interesting pairings for the stone and straw houses on the small Taiwanese island. The middle shot is of tile roofs in southern France, 2018; the bottom one shows villagers re-thatching a farmhouse in Japan, 1970. Such roofs, which need to be regularly renewed, keep out the rain while allowing cooking smoke to filter out through the straw. The smoke also serves to keep down the insect population in the thatch, although I was awakened one morning by a 4-inch long poisonous centipede dropping onto my face.