in the closet

A lot of the plaster boards are installed on the second floor, the kitchen, and M's massage therapy salon, which has given the rooms a sense of reality. Here, though, in the tatami room, there's still a lot of detail work to be done. When we visited yesterday, Suzuki-san, the master carpenter, was finishing up this closet interior on the right. While we were there, he finished building a shelf at waist level and, he assured us, it was strong enough to hold the weight of an adult, though we will probably just use it for futon for guests.

The tokonoma is to the left of the closet, and shoji doors, shoji transoms, and shoji window frames will enclose this room in translucency when they're closed. This is exactly the same layout as the old house, and since we're going to use everything from the old house, the height of the closet is about 177cm, or 5'10"--probably a decent height for Japanese when the doors were made in the early 20th century. All the doors from the old house are the same, so anyone over that height will have to duck on entering this room--and, in fact, the main entrance.

Suzuki-san was laughing because he's 175cm tall, and he stood inside the door frame to show how perfectly he fits. I joined him to show him that I just barely don't; I'm a hair under 178cm and I have the scars on my skull to prove it. But I like the idea of having to bow slightly on entering; a frequent lesson in humility (and sometimes scream-inducing pain).