Visitors can walk through, meditate inside, and look out from the House of Light during the day. In the evenings, couples and groups adjust the indirect lighting in the room while spending the night in this unusual house that combines traditional Japanese architectural elements and natural light – with light displays of Turrell’s conception.

Visitors often lay on the traditional tatami-matted floor of one room after pressing the button opening the retractable roof. During the day, clouds appear to float in the opening of a square-cut ceiling. The Milky Way’s clarity through the open ceiling dazzles at night. Woods surround the House of Light, which perches on a mountainside outside tiny art-loving Tokamachi City. In remote Tokamachi, big city lights don’t obscure the millions of brilliant pinpricks of starlight piercing the heavens. While watching the night display, just outside, fox, frog, and insect calls might serenade you.

In the morning, natural light filters through trees and pours through expansive windows into the bath. The bath is integral to daily life and culture for most Japanese people. Turrell installed a system of changing fiber optic lights in the bath area that create dreamlike illusions, especially in the evening. The house plays with our senses.

During the 2022 Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, curators of the art field displayed more than 300 artworks, each with a unique idea, feeling, and location. The Echigo-Tsumari Art Field is vast, but with so much art, one is never far from inspiration framed by unparalleled views.

For example, Nakago Green Park, located just a five-minute walk from the House of Light, has a whimsical but thought-provoking collection of four outdoor sculptures representing four meaningful stories. These eye-catching works are a tribute to author Rachel Carson, who wrote about the dangers of chemical pollution.

A pedestrian tunnel drilled through a mountain is the most popular of the Echigo-Tsumari interactive artworks. Oval spaces within the tunnel open to views of steep valleys, rocky slopes, and a snowmelt river sliding under clear skies. These spaces are perhaps the most Instagrammable locations in Niigata. For example, at the far end of the Panorama Station, the water pools to form a natural mirror, and the V-shaped cliffs plunging from the sky into the river are reflected on the water’s surface. Visitors come from afar to take photographs of themselves within this marvelous reflection. This tunnel, called the Tunnel of Light, is a scenic 40-minute drive from the House of Light.