The Conscious Living — Japan
Where Argentine soul meets Swiss precision and Japanese awareness.
There are places and objects in this world that do not ask to be admired. They ask to be felt. Through the lens of Valeria Viollaz, founder and creative director of VV Interior Home, this curated journey through Japan is not a travel guide — it is an invitation to a different quality of attention.
Rooted in the philosophy of conscious living and the belief that true luxury is the one that endures, this selection brings together spaces, creators, and experiences that share a common thread: the art of doing less, and meaning more. Each encounter carries the same quiet conviction that has always defined VV Interior Home — that the most meaningful things are not the loudest, nor the most visible, but those that leave something behind long after the moment has passed.
Japan, in this sense, is not a destination. It is a state of mind that Valeria has long recognized as a mirror of her own curatorial vision — a culture that has always understood that beauty lives in impermanence, in restraint, and in the profound dignity of the everyday.
This is where Argentine soul meets Swiss precision and Japanese awareness.
Silence before the mountain — CYCL Sauna, Lake Yamanakako, Japan
Curation: VV Interior Home by Valeria Viollaz ·
Photography: CYCL
01 — Silence Before the Mountain CYCL Sauna · Lake Yamanakako · Mount Fuji, Japan
Stillness as a ritual
CYCL — LAKE YAMANAKAKO
At the foot of Mount Fuji, where the lake merges with the sky, CYCL redefines the ancient bathing ritual as a conscious act of presence. This lakeside facility in Yamanakako, Yamanashi, is built around a single extraordinary element: natural spring water from the Fuji underground aquifer, flowing at 90 liters per minute and maintained at a constant 12 degrees year-round — pure enough to drink.
The architecture, inspired by the kasagumo — the lenticular cloud that crowns Mount Fuji — dissolves the boundary between interior and landscape. A 360-degree panoramic lounge opens entirely toward the lake and the mountain, inviting a slowness that is both rare and necessary.
CYCL is not simply a place to visit. It is a place to return to yourself — where water, silence, and one of the world's most iconic landscapes converge into a single, unhurried breath.
cycl.co.jp
The Sweetness of Silence · Kobutsunomi 鉱物の実 A fruit of reminiscence, Okashimaru, Kyoto, Japan.
Curation: VV Interior Home by Valeria Viollaz
Photography: Sayoko Sugiyama
02 — The Sweetness of Silence Okashimaru · Wagashi Laboratory · Kyoto, Japan
Beauty before the last bite
OKASHIMARU — KYOTO
Sayoko Sugiyama creates confections in Kyoto that begin where most sweets end — at the threshold between looking and tasting. Each piece captures a fleeting moment from the natural world: silence in snow, light filtered through leaves, the trace of wind on water.
Made from seasonal ingredients — mountain potato, agar, wild fruits, handpicked botanicals — her works are not decorations. They are edible meditations. Objects that disappear, and in disappearing, leave something behind.
Okashimaru reminds us that the most meaningful things are also the most impermanent.
Nishitoin Store — Marukyu Koyamaen, Kyoto, Japan.
Photography: Marukyu Koyamaen ·
Curation: VV Interior Home by Valeria Viollaz · marukyu-koyamaen.co.jp
03 — Quality as a Way of Life Marukyu Koyamaen · Uji Tea Estate · Kyoto, Japan
Three centuries in a single bowl
MARUKYU KOYAMAEN — UJI, KYOTO
Founded in the 17th century in Uji, Kyoto, Marukyu Koyamaen has been held by the Koyama family for over three hundred years. Not as a business passed down — but as a responsibility. Each generation inheriting not only the estate, but the conviction that quality is not a standard to meet. It is a way of being.
Their matcha is cultivated in silence, in the same fields, with the same patience. Supplied to the head masters of Japan's most revered traditional tea schools, it is not made for the market. It is made for the moment — the precise, unhurried moment of a single bowl prepared with full attention.
In a world that moves fast and produces faster, Marukyu Koyamaen reminds us that the most enduring things are never rushed.
PROJECT CREDITS
Curation: VV Interior Home by Valeria Viollaz
Copywriter: Valeria Viollaz
Photography: CYCL · Sayoko Sugiyama · Marukyu Koyamaen Design: Octupuslab Coordination: Viollaz Group
Originally published in Chiswick Life, The Life Magazines — July 2026