There is a considerable difference in height between the top of this village and the bottom. Ochiai was built by stacking stone retaining walls up a steep slope and placing houses, one at a time, on the terraces that resulted. Because the dwellings are separated vertically rather than horizontally, visiting a neighbour means climbing or descending, and distances here are more usefully measured in metres of elevation than in metres of ground.

There is a viewing point on the far side of the valley, and from it the whole settlement can be seen at once as a single inclined surface — which is the only way to grasp how it is put together. Ochiai was designated an Important Preservation District in December 2005 and continues as a village of a few dozen households. Ikeda is about an hour and a half away by car, winter here requires preparation rather than improvisation, and daily life assumes a vehicle for everyone who needs to leave.

A settlement on a slope manufactures its flat land out of stonework. Every wall built adds a further piece of ground where a field or a house can go, so the total quantity of stone walling in a village of this kind is a direct measure of its usable area — and if a wall collapses, the area itself is reduced. That is a rare situation to be in: here, land can be lost through a failure of maintenance rather than through sale or disaster. The stepped appearance of Ochiai is the accumulated result of generations of people manufacturing level ground in a place that had none to begin with.