(FORTUNE Magazine) – One of the trendiest magazines in Japan right now: Woody Life, a quarterly devoted to buying, decorating, adding to, and doing over log cabins, themselves one of the country's hottest fads. There are Abe Lincoln Levittowns in new resort developments, year-round Santa Claus villages of log cabin bed- and-breakfast establishments, even a log-built Buddhist temple. Log cabin penthouses could very well be next. A Tokyo entrepreneur is selling kits for log homes not much bigger than a Toyota to sit atop high-rises. Sales of log cabins have almost doubled in each of the past five years to some $450 million annually. More than half come from the U.S., Canada, and Scandinavia. The buyers are Tokyo apartment dwellers, including yuppies, who, like their U.S. counterparts, tour city streets in four-wheel-drive trucks. Says importer Kotaro Noda: ''Land prices are so high in the city that people have given up ever having a house. So they buy a bit of land in the countryside and a log cabin to put on it.'' Noda gets his cabins from Asperline of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. A basic four-room cabin sells for $100,000 to $200,000. A lot measuring one- tenth of an acre in one of the resort communities a five-hour drive from Tokyo costs an additional $50,000. Modern plumbing and electricity are installed free. Assembling the cabins has sparked another import: carpenters, including 20 Americans. Japan can't supply the demand.