I am thinking something along this line....

http://www.greenwallsolutions.com/

The building is built into a bank, the north side like a bank barn. It minimizes the surface area exposed to the cold and or heat. In my case the south east face would be infilled with wood chip clay using the larson truss system, over a plank wall and clay render to seal it up. As clay wood chip is more of a thermal mass system rather than an insulating R-value system it will store heat from the day, too. This is not the exterior, but has a greenhouse built around it. It would protect the wall from exposure in wetter climates and the south easterly wind driven rain, provide room for growing food year round, move the house to a zone further south, and be used for a supplement to the heating system, perhaps some duct work in the higher reaches to be blown into the house and growing beds. This duct system will keep the soil in the growing beds at 45 degrees at the coldest times in a Maine winter.

Any wall not covered with the green house would be foamed to R-50+, roof too.

My tweaking of the Earthship system, to keep it somewhere close to a traditional looking building.

I hope the people of Japan recover from the destruction. How is your Japanese?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQj7TaHc7HE

Listed in the Cons in the Guilds quarterly, one of the cons is the drying of the clay system, the green house would extend the window, thus removing it from the cons list. It will also relieve some of the pressure of the technical issues, namely the cold climate thermal mass part. I am not sure why clayless sites or regions would be exempt from using clay as a building material. Most building system are shipped from long distances. It would be nice if it was local but not totally necessary, clay is still a rather "raw" material.