Kamikuishiki was a village at the foot of Mount Fuji where Aum bought land and put up numbered prefabricated buildings it called satian, from a Sanskrit word for truth. Inside were dormitories, practice halls, a kitchen producing the same boiled meal every day, and a birthing and child-rearing arrangement that separated children from parents. Villagers complained for years about smells and noise. Satian 7 housed the chemical plant, disguised behind a shrine hall. Residents were working, practising and sleeping on a schedule set for them, in a community that from the inside looked like a demanding monastery and from a hundred metres away smelled of solvent.