Pros and cons of family life in a Japanese house

Often, I find myself thinking about what I like and dislike about our Japanese house from the perspective of raising a family in one. Has anyone else ever thought about their home in Japan from this viewpoint? Here's a snippet of my pros and cons list for my house from a family friendly mindset.

Pros: 

Tatami flooring

One thing I love about raising kids in a Japanese house? The fall-friendly tatami flooring!

I love tatami floors. They're particularly forgiving when kids are running around and fall over - much more than tiles or floorboards which are commonplace back home. Maybe it's just me, but I also love that earthy, straw smell that tatami has. Any time I'm away from home for a few days, I come back, smell the tatami, and immediately feel relaxed. 

Cons: 

Heating and cooling in only two rooms

I don't know what everyone else's house setup is like, but we currently live in a 6DK. Of those rooms, only two have air con/gas heating. For the rest of the house, we have to supplement with fans and heaters when we're using the additional rooms, which doesn't really do all that much in the grand scheme of things. At certain times of year (the middle of winter, and the middle of summer) we often find ourselves predominantly living out of the two rooms with A/C and gas heating, and it can make you start feeling a little stir crazy to be honest. Even though our house sounds large by Japanese standards on paper, feeling like some rooms are unusable during parts of the year can make it seem like we live in a closet.

Poor insulation

At a guess I would say our house was built sometime in the 70's, which was a great era for quick construction, but not really a great one for attention to detail or style. As seems to be the case for many Japanese homes, insulation is non-existent, meaning that trying to heat or cool our house requires Herculean effort. It also ends up being a whopping expense. If it was just my husband and I, there are probably days where I'd just try and bear the cold, or the heat (within reason), but that's not something I'm prepared to do with kids.

Shoji paper

It looks great from an aesthetic perspective, and it definitely has a function in homes - but when you have kids, it doesn't take long until it begins to look pretty shabby. The amount of accidental holes (and subsequent patch jobs) in our shoji panels has increased at an exponential rate. I thought I could prevent it, but with young kids it's been chalked up to an inevitability now.

What are your favorite and least favorite things about your Japanese home and raising your family in one?