You don’t have to travel to Japan to learn traditional Japanese carpentry skills. That’s because we have Kohei Yamamoto and Jon Billing of Soma Kosha Japan teaching an exclusive Professional Japanese Carpentry Intensive at our location in eastern Kentucky. We’ll go in-depth and hands-on with hand tool setup and use, center line layout, joinery, frame design, assembly, and raising — the entirety of the ishibatate construction process. This is a incredibly rare opportunity to work closely with top tier professionals for an extended duration and learn the full depth of the traditional craft and trade.
Workshop Info at a Glance:
- Workshop Dates: Summer Intensive — May 20 – September 18, 2025
- Location: South Slope Farm, 15 minutes outside Berea, Kentucky (map)
- Instructors: Kohei Yamamoto and Jon Billing of Soma Kosha, Okayama, Japan
- Includes camping accommodations
- Cost: $9600
- Participation limited to 4 students
- Please reach out to Ziggy Liloia for more program details and application
Workshop Location
The Professional Japanese Carpentry Intensive is located 15 minutes outside of Berea, Kentucky (map) at our land, South Slope Farm. We live in the gorgeous Clear Creek Valley on 30 acres of hillside pasture and woods. Our farm sits in the middle of a rural community with many folks dedicated to art, music, community building, permaculture, and activism. We are pleased to be surrounded many motivated friends and neighbors who want to live creative, heartfelt lives.
Berea is a small town in central Kentucky with an active population of craftspeople, artists, woodworkers, musicians, social activists, and homesteaders. The town has a longstanding tradition of diversity, social justice, environmental responsibility, and community service. The historic Berea College is the first interracial and coeducational college in the South, and its influence on the town remains to this day.
Workshop Schedule
Our daily schedule will follow the same general structure each day, Monday through Friday. Weekends are free for students to explore the local area, rest and relax, etc.
- 7:30 A.M.: Breakfast
- 8:00 A.M.: Begin morning work session
- 12:00 P.M.: Lunch break
- 1:00 P.M.: Afternoon work session
- 5:00 P.M.: Free time, shower, relax
- 6:30 P.M.: Dinner
Everything You Need To Know
Interest in traditional Japanese carpentry methods has increased greatly over the last 10 years, with many American carpenters and timber framers looking to adopt some of the time-honored techniques and methods from Japanese construction modalities. Teacher Kohei Yamamoto has been running Soma Kosha, his own construction company for 10 years and is invested in spreading his knowledge far and wide to keep the knowledge not only alive but evolving, including at home in Okayama, Japan but overseas as well.
We’ve been hosting intensives and trainings since 2012 and take great pride in cultivating a welcoming, community-oriented experience. Students return again and again based on their positive experiences with us, and over time we’ve cultivated a powerful network of teachers, builders, and support staff.
What You Can Expect
- Layout using traditional center line methods with ink pen and sashigane (square)
- Chisel and hammer: tool setup and fine-tuning
- Hand plane deep dive: blade and dai setup and sharpening to produce very fine shavings
- Blade sharpening methods with waterstones
- Hand tools for cutting joinery including saws, chisel (nomi), hand plane (kanna)
- Hewing with an adze (chouna) and axe (ono)
- Timber framing history in Japan and ishibatate design principles
- Lessons in joinery selection, building design and layout, building proportions
- Stone foundation preparation and shooting levels
- Joinery in both square and hewn timbers
- Scribing timbers for an accurate fit
- Weaving bamboo lattice for clay plaster wall
- Assembly and raising
We’re Bringing The Masters To You
We’re absolutely delighted to have Kohei Yamamoto of Soma Kosha and Jon Billing of Big Sand Woodworking instructing our Professional Japanese Carpentry Intensive. Kohei and Jon are incredibly talented carpenters and instructors. They’re dedicated to a high degree of quality and detail and they’re also just all-around wonderful human beings. We’re privileged to have them here for our workshops.
The Story of Soma Kosha
Kohei-san started Soma Kosha in 2013, specializing in a traditional style of building that began thousands of years ago in Japan and was the standard until WW2. After the war, American building practices began to be popularized. However, buildings that were meant to last for hundreds of years such as temples and shrines continued to be built with traditional techniques handed down and perfected for generations in Japan. Kohei-san worked firsthand on these structures and wondered why homes and other public buildings weren’t built this same way. Now Soma Kosha works on temples, shrines, teahouses, homes, and other public buildings — repairing and building new in the long tradition of the Japanese master carpenters. See more at somakosha.com.
The Love of Hand Tools: Kohei Yamamoto
Kohei-san was raised in Okayama, Japan. After high school, he started working in a Mitsubishi car parts factory and soon realized it wasn’t what he wanted to do long term. He started a one year program to find new employment and took a course on furniture making. In that one year, Kohei-san fell in love with hand tools and decided he wanted to work with them for the rest of his life. His teacher told him to become a temple carpenter if he really wanted to use hand tools for a living.
Kohei-san worked as a temple & shrine carpenter for nearly 9 years before starting his own company, Soma Kosha. Kohei-san passed his examinations for both second and first class licensure in Japan as an architect. He also won first prize in his exam for first class licensure as a carpenter (for building a hip roof model with finish jack rafters in less than 4 hours from scratch).