Favorite place to shop for materials or inspiration: “For books, I love spending time at Alias in L.A. When I go back to Japan, visiting temples is a wonderful reference and experience in general. On our last trip, Kristin and I saw a group of miyadaiku (temple carpenters) repairing the gateway arches to a shrine. The bed of their truck held a pile of replacement posts with hand-carved joinery. We watched them for an hour, fitting the pieces together with 10 different types of mallets.”