What remains at Ōya is the space the stone came out of. The underground quarry beneath the town is open to visitors: twenty thousand square metres of it, reaching thirty metres below ground at its deepest point, with the marks of the tools that removed the rock still legible on the walls. The average temperature inside is around eight degrees, so arriving in August means walking down into a difference you can see in your own breath. The cold is even, without draughts, and it does not change as you go further in.

Opening hours change with the season — nine to five from April to November, half past nine to half past four from December to March — which is a small reminder that the place is a hole in the ground rather than a building, and that the ground does not heat itself. Above it, the surrounding hamlets are built of the same tuff: storehouses and houses stacked in Ōya stone, so that the material did not only leave for the cities but stayed and did the ordinary work here as well. Utsunomiya's centre is twenty minutes away by car, and there is still employment in stone here, which keeps the place from being only a site.

The hole turned out to be the largest thing made here. The stone itself was carried away and became buildings in other places, scattered and unremarkable; what stayed behind was its absence, cut square. People now travel to stand inside the absence, which is an odd order of events for an industry that was only ever trying to get the material out and sell it. The quarry did not intend to make a room.